The so-called “honeymoon phase” of a relationship is a grand and wonderful thing.  Everything seems to fall away in the presence of, or even a mere thought of that new(ish) someone special.  One can easily pass hours, days, weeks without even realizing.  Time is easily filled with just being together.  *sigh* And how long does it last?  I guess it’s different for different people in different situations.  I suppose it could easily go on for years with a young couple in the prime of their lives and careers, with no kids or severe responsibilities.  When talking and love-making are all that’s really important. 

Someone recently told me “you can’t stop the Earth from spinning.”  It’s true.  You can’t.  I’ve tried.  Oh, to hold on to those honeymoon times forever.  To shed responsibility and live in the rapture that is new love.  It feels almost as if the Earth has stopped spinning for those moments…almost.  But in the end it all comes back into focus in jarring reality.  Life does in fact go on, and responsibilities still sit at your door and wait for you, no matter how long it takes for you to come out. 

Mr. W and I have a fantastic relationship.  In the beginning, we were fully enchanted with the honeymoon stages of things.  Responsibilities fell away and things like sleep just didn’t feel important.  Of course, this was also before the boy started school and my kids were still on the 2 weeks here, 2 weeks there rotation, so, no, I did not totally cast off all responsibility for a piece of ass, thank you very much.  Anyway.  Right around the time we moved in together and he left for Iraq, all that slowing of the Earth on its axis snapped back with full force and we’ve been struggling to recover ever since. 

There are: kid issues, health issues (oh, my are there health issues!), a need for sleep that can’t be ignored, insomnia (on both our parts), schedules with my exes, schedules with his ex, schedules with work, schedules with family, pets, holidays, time off, sick time, working, college, schools, housework, yard work, financial issues, stresses from all sides, creative transportation arranging (i.e. carting kids here and there), doctors appointments for 6 different people, dentist appointments, braces, learning to drive, buying a car, buying a house, selling a house, moving, storing, decluttering, organizing, Christmas shopping, dinners, lunches, groceries, cooking, planning, exercising, not exercising, great intentions and epic fails…the list of life goes on and on…and on.

It all seems to have come at once, knocking us square on our asses, struggling to regain our footing in the world, that damn spinning world.  But we are doing it together.  We are side by side in all of it, helping each other get a foothold here, dragging each other down as we slip there, but together through it all.  In the end, what more could you really ask for? 

I don’t think a successful relationship can be judged purely on happiness.  Seriously.  No one, no one in the world is 100% happy 100% of the time.  It’s not possible.  Unless they secretly found a way to stop the Earth from spinning and are happily living in one of their moments of happiness, but I highly doubt it.  The glory of life is it’s ups and downs.  How can you possibly know how good things are now if they’ve never been bad?  How can you know true happiness if you’ve never felt sadness?  How can you  know the true height of joy if you’ve never seen the true depth of despair?  Good and evil must coexist in order to be, so how could the same not hold true to the other pairs?  Mr. W and I have both been to the lowest of lows and have come out the other side fully ready to appreciate the high that is us.  We’ve had heartbreak and have mended each other’s hearts.  We’ve had despair and brought tears of joy to each other’s eyes.  We’ve been broken and have worked to put each other back together again.  That’s just how we roll. 

The best of the best?  We are just there.  Through the hard and the bad and the sad and the stressing, we are there.  No time in our relationship (so far) has been harder than now.  But we are still there.  All those things I listed above, all those responsibilities and “problems,”  yeah, we’ve got them.  Even without the added external stresses (kids, jobs, schools, etc, etc) we have quite literal “shit” going on just with us, or more to the point, me.  My Lyme disease = pain (physical for me, emotional for him), moodiness on both sides, stress, worry, and more stress, financial difficulty (yeah, doctors’ bills.  Gotta love ‘em!), and limits in just about everything, and really, who likes having limits?  But he’s there.  He’s here.  He stands by me.  Yes, sometimes he has trouble accepting his role of stand-next-to-er and tries to do that man thing of trying to fix everything.  But he’s working on that.  I can see where it’s hard to be helpless in all this.  To witness so much pain and suffering and not be able to do a thing about it.  I understand. 

And he tries. 

And we do it all together.  As best friends, as lovers, as soul-mates, as the most wonderful us we can be.  Together. 

******************************************************************************************************************************************************** 

I’m getting my chest port/Groshong catheter put in on Friday morning.  I’m freaking the hell out!  He quit smoking already, for me, and for him, and for me.  He said he finally has a reason to want to live a long healthy life.  All together now: *awwww*    I’m quitting too, although not as abruptly, or successfully.  But it’s hard to quit when you are freaking the hell out about something less than a week away.  He gets it without my explanation.  He accepts my weakness and loves me still.  Would you still love me if I were 400lbs?  Would you still love me if I lost all my hair?  Will you still love me when I’m old?  Will you still love me with a 4″ long tube sticking out of my chest? 

Of course he will.  And I call him Mr. Wonderful!

And the count-down begins: 35 days until I get to see the boy again.  I drove him up to meet his dad yesterday (yuck), and he won’t be back until our two-week vacation in July.  The girl will be continuing her normal schedule, but the summer will have a lot of kid-less time that I’m really not happy about.  As frustrating as they can be, it is so much worse when they simply aren’t around.  After the two weeks home, the boy will be back at his dad’s for another three weeks before school starts.  *sigh*

But, that gives me roughly 56 days to get my poop together and make some healthy changes in my/our life:

Step 1)  Physical health. 

We began today.  Mr. W and I woke at the crack of freaking dawn (415am) and got our lazy, unfit butts to the gym.  I’ve bubbled out here and there (here being my tummy and there being my butt and thighs) to the tune of adding a size and a half.  Mr. W has been complaining that he’s gained too, although I don’t see it, so I figured it’s a good start.  Our schedule consists of 3 days of weight training, and 2 days of cardio (running, blah!) to get us started. 

We intended to quit smoking along with the gym routine, but, yeah, that didn’t work out so well.  Smoking is a hard thing to put down.  My personal goal is to be quit by the time the boy comes home.  Hmmm…we shall see… The hardest part is that Mr. W smokes and isn’t ready to quit.  Even when we try together, we usually talk each other into cheating.  Well, at least we are united! 

Sleeping kind of goes along with the gym.  We both suffer from insomnia, and we both are constantly tired.  Not good.  So I set my alarm on my phone to go off at 9pm, and our agreement is at that point we wrap up whatever we are doing and head upstairs.  Our biggest challenge will be watching only one (or none, if we don’t have the time) episode of LOST a night.  We are into season 4 now, the season I haven’t seen.  And those of you who watch know that cliffhanger, accompanied by the “dun” and the “LOST” at the end of each episode is like cutting a crack addict off mid-puff! 

And the diet.  Well, not really a diet in the sense of the evil version.  More like a diet-adjustment.  Cutting back to cutting out fast food for one.  (By fast food I mean the Don, the King, the Colonel, and that red-headed chick.  We don’t really ring the Bell much, for, *ahem* other reasons!)  My vegetable garden has committed suicide by drowning…who knew you had to incorporate drainage?  Probably the same person who knew we were going to get days on end of torrential downpours in the middle of June!  So I will be hitting up our local produce stands, planning our meals a week prior, and avoiding the snack eisles in the grocery store…well, mostly…  Mr. W started us off right last night with the fabulous yumminess of eggplant parmesan.  Mmm, mmm, good!  Seriously!

Step 2)  Mental health.

No, not that kind of mental health.  I’m talking about peace of mind.  The house is cluttered and difficult to keep straight.  So we will be doing something about that.  The biggest areas to purge are the toys and the clothes, both very difficult for me.  My kids actually play with all their toys.  They cycle through them regularly, and have gotten very good about putting them away.  That said, they have a lot of freaking toys!  The clothes are hard too, especially with me in this weird body place that is bigger than the majority of my clothes, but is planning on being back there soon with the whole gym thing…plus, I really really like clothes!

After the toys and clothes, we will  move on to general organizing and purging as we go along.  The bookshelves, the utility/laundry room, our desk spaces, the kids closets (currently used for very disorganized storage of God knows what), and our bedroom.  I truly believe a cluttered house leads to a cluttered mind, and we all know I don’t need any more of that!

Then it’s some us time.  He doesn’t know it yet, but I plan to implement some sort of regular couple activity, even if it’s in the form of a “date night,” as cliche as that is.  We deserve it.  We need it.  Nuff said.    

Step 3)  Financial health.

We are planning a wedding, looking for a house, saving for braces, college, emergencies, paying off our February vacation (on credit card)…and yet we can’t go a week without a visit to Target, WalMart, BestBuy, GameStop, Old Navy, and/or PetCo.  (Sometimes all of the above!)  I don’t know how yet, but we are going to be diving into our financial matters over the summer and figure out how exactly we are going to accomplish our goals, together, with the least amount of pain.

I figure planning and organization are key in all of this…but as I suck at both, I could use some tips or pointers on how to make it work and especially how to stick with it.  I’m sure I’m not the only one trying to make healthier choices in my life, so if anyone out there is in the midst and has figured out something that works for them, let me know.  I will post the best/most helpful ideas in an update post in 2 weeks.