I haven't written in a little while about being in love.  I thought, jeez, nobody really wants to keep hearing about that, I'll give it a rest. But I don't want anyone to think it's not still happening.


I've gotten better at it.  I'm able to walk and talk and go to work and more or less function in the world now, while still being in love. It helps that John has essentially moved in with me while my boy is with his dad in Oklahoma. Having him with me during pretty much all my non-work hours helps keep the obsession factor under control.


I was nervous about cohabiting with John. I haven't lived with a man since I was married and, well, you know how that turned out...


I've long had a theory, as stated here, that domesticity ruins a man... that they begin to take you for granted the moment you move in together, and you end up being the House Mother, handling all the cooking, cleaning and overall household management...and resenting it.  But maybe, just maybe, that's not always true.


John has these regular routines of tidying up, putting things away... which is way more than I can say for myself. I admit sometimes his buzzing about when I get home from work can make me a bit nervy. I'm generally a drop-on-the-sofa-with-a-glass-of-wine type person immediately upon arriving home.  Chores have to wait until I've got that first cocktail into me. However, John has had a surprisingly positive influence. I've been falling into the pattern:  taking a few minutes each day to clean things up a bit; putting things in the dishwasher instead of dropping them in the sink, that sort of thing.  I'm sure it will all go to hell the moment G gets home and John goes back to his apartment.  But it's working fine for now.


The dogs seem to have settled in with him, as well. Fortunately he doesn't have any problem sharing his sofa space or the bed with a dog or two:  Kobi, who habitually burrows under the covers to lie near our feet, and Roxy who sometimes climbs up and hogs most or all of the foot of the bed and eventually has to be shoved off.  Flower, fortunately, has chosen the chair as her bedtime spot.


Flower has also taken it upon herself to personally tend to John's shoes every day when he gets home from workt. When he walks in the door, he always takes off his shoes -- covered it kitchen grease from the restaurant -- and leaves them on a throw-rug so they don't get black grease all over the carpet.  Flower meets him at the door, and is sometimes licking his shoes before he can even get them off.  She then lies down and spends the next 10 to 15 minutes thoroughly and lovingly licking every bit of grease off of his shoes. This gave us a great deal of amusement until we left her unattended this week and she chewed a hole right through the sole of one of them.  Whoops.


Meanwhile, despite the cozy domesticity of shacking up with John, I'm beginning to go into deep withdrawal for my son. I knew this long separation would be hard, but the first couple of weeks were mitigated somewhat by having John around full-time. Then we drove to Oklahoma and I got to spend a few hours with G before we drove him to camp, and it was good to see him and talk to him, but in some ways it just made me miss him more.


I was completely unsure about having children when I got pregnant with Grayson. It was a sort of deliberate accident, and I remember being utterly terrified when I found out I was actually going to have a baby.  Babies were not my thing, and I didn't know how to talk to children. I spent the early months of my pregnancy being in a state of complete terror.


Then he was born and my heart turned completely inside out. I had no concept of the kind of love I was capable of feeling.  I was completely and totally bought and paid for. My sense of self, of love, of what is important in life, was irreversibly changed.  It frankly unnerved the ex. Later, when things started to go bad for us, he admitted that he essentially began his disconnection from me with the birth of our son.  I hear that's fairly common.


Anyway, my point being... my relationship with my boy continues to amaze and delight me. I love watching him grow up, I enjoy his humor and his company. I am more completely myself with him than I had ever been with anyone until recently when I met John.  And I realize that I feel a little hole in my heart when Grayson is not around. Even when I know he is happy and healthy at camp or with his dad or whatever, I am diminished by his absence. I'm sad. And when he's with me I feel complete, like all of me is there.


Now I begin to wonder if, when Grayson returns, I'll begin to feel John's absence that way. Well, we'll find out soon.  He's home again in three days. I can't wait!  I'm missing him so much.  I try to IM or Skype with him during the day, so we can communicate, and that helps. But there's no substitute for just having him home.  Where he belongs.


T minus three days and counting...

In Which I Realize My Limitations

I've had an epiphany.  A real Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus freakin' revelation.  You want to hear it?  Of course you do.

I am incredibly. Out of Shape.

Wow.  Really.  No, I'm not kidding.  It is absolutely true. I know this because I had a revelation.  It was yesterday. At the gym. In a step-aerobics class.

First of all, some backstory:
When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I was a step-aerobic queen.  I went to a high-intensity class three times a week and I dominated it.  I raised my step to the highest setting, and I went hell-bent-for-leather the whole 55-minute class-period.  I was so hard-core that (bear with me, this was in the nineties, remember)  I even had a thong leotard.  Yeah, that's right.  A thong. (We wore bike shorts underneath, of course, but ... still ...what was I thinking??)

So, when I decided lately that I needed to get a bit more exercise, I chose the step class because I figured, with muscle memory and all, I'd be able to get my groove back fairly quickly.

Holy Mother of God!  Within 15 minutes, I was thoroughly winded. In 20 minutes my heart was revved up like Greased Lightning at the starting line and I was starting to lose coordination.  In 25 minutes I had to take a break, walk around a bit, get some water, try not to throw up.

It was, in all honesty, somewhat alarming.  I seriously thought I might be in danger of having a heart attack! I was modifying everything waaaaaay down and still breathing like a distempered work horse, my heart all cattawhampus in my chest and feeling light-headed and shaky. It concerns me that at age 45, my heart is already such a pussy.

So, that was my epiphany.  It's one thing to be out of shape, but it's quite another thing to realize that your heart is out of shape.  I realized if I keep on like I have been, I'm going to just continue to get weaker and weaker until I wind up a wizened old woman, curled up like a C and tottering about looking at the ground, wheezing.

So ... I've decided I must take evasive action.  I think if I keep going to this godawful class at least twice a week, I should be able to at least finish the workout, without stopping to put my heart back in my chest,  in about three weeks.  I'm determined to get to that point.  I should at least be able to get through the workout.  For the sake of my eleven-year-old son, I need to keep my heart alive for a few more years.

No thong leotard though.  I absolutely draw the line there.

In my book, summer doesn't officially begin until you've had your first close encounter with water. Thanks to an unusually warm spring, this year we got a jump on the season and were able to hit the river in mid May.  Actually, as of this posting, I've had two river encounters:  first a few weeks ago with Grayson, and again just last weekend with Grayson and John.

At the risk of flogging the subject, I'm still amazed at the amount of water being wantonly squandered and wasted by the natural landscape of Arkansas. No Oklahoma landscape would dare to be so profligate with water!  But here it's bubbling out of the ground and coursing through streambeds at every turn.

Case in point: this wonderful nameless creek, just ten minutes from our house. This is a wonderful little spring-fed waterway that meanders through south Bella Vista, emptying at last into Bella Vista lake. It's deep enough to swim in at several locations, and swift enough to knock you off your feet if you're not careful in others. It winds through a beautiful public park just as it approaches the lake, and it's easily accessable and nearby.  To me, it's practically the Riviera.

I mean, seriously, what more could you ask for?  Clear, cold, moving water, bright sunshine, a rocky beach, and a beautiful natural setting--all for free and within minutes of our house!  Add a red solo cup full of margarita and  Bam! You're in frickin' Cabo San Lucas!

So on Saturday we loaded up an ice chest full of snacks and drinks (Capris Sun for Grex, bloody Marys and margaritas for John and me, respectively), and spent the day river-walking.

I don't know what it is about rocks and water that makes me so happy, but it seemed to work on John and Grayson, as well.  We took a bunch of photos and John's pretty much grinning like an idiot in every one.  He had clearly been river-deprived for far too long.  It's just not good for the spirit to be away from moving water for an extended period of time, at least that's my philosophy. It was gratifying to see both my boys having fun.  we explored the creek, saw lots of crawdads and fish, one snake (well, the boys saw it, I missed it), and one frog, which we caught and released.

It was good to get some good outdoor summer fun time in with Grayson before he left, too.  I took him to his dad on Tuesday evening and he won't be home again until June 24.  That's nearly four weeks without him!  I've never gone so long before without my boy.

He won't mind. He has spent the past few days at Texoma with my folks, then he'll spend a week with his dad, then a week at camp, and then another week with his dad, who has signed him up for a filmmaking class and some sort of program at the zoo in Oklahoma City, so he'll be busy and content. It's me who will be lonely and pitiful by the end of the second week. I always think I'm going to do more with my grown-up time than I ever actually do, and as much as I complain about Grayson's constant high-volume Cartoon Network and spontaneous mess generation... it's awfully quiet without him.

Help is on the way, however.  John has essentially moved in with me for the interval. He arrived Wednesday night with a suitcase and a toothbrush, and we are conducting experiments in cohabitation.  It's been a long time since I've shared space with anyone besides Grayson, so this could be revelatory. For both of us, in fact.

It occurs to me that I have several strikes against me as a housemate.
1) I'm a slob
2) I'm lazy enough to not even care most of the time that I'm a slob
3) I'm not much of a cook or a meal planner and would gladly live on cereal and red wine
4) I have three dogs who like to sleep on the bed and bark in the middle of the night

And these are just the obvious ones. There's a whole realm of emotional and psychological strikes against me that we won't even mention.  We'll see if John can take it.