Working for the Weekend (Literally)

So during Rick's time on medical leave he realized how difficult work can be when you've gotten accustomed to not doing it.  It's both liberating to have him feel my pain -you know, that pain I get each Sunday evening and when we come back from vacation - but it's also disheartening to know that maybe it's not possible to fall into a job that you end up loving.  Rick never daydreamed about working in demolition, but isn't it almost every straight boy's dream to tear a structure to pieces. Doesn't every guy wish that instead of doing whatever he does with his days he's picking up a sledge hammer and showing a wall why we walk upright? Sure, the job is hard and the hours are sometimes terrible (like when you have to go in at 9 o'clock on a Friday night leaving your wife to her blog and bottle of wine...), but it's something different almost everyday, makes working out in your spare time completely unnecessary, and you get to come home dirty like you did something with yourself for the past 8 hours.  And yeah it cut me to the core to hear him talk about how much he enjoyed work. Yet, now that the he's singing the opposite tune it cuts even deeper. Before I was just jealous, now I'm concerned.  Now I understand how he must feel to see me stressed out and sometimes completely wiped out at the thought of another day doing what I do.

Add this to the list of things I'm learning about married life. I genuinely care about my husband's day-to-day happiness.  There's no doubt that his battle with cancer has softened my woe-is-me attitude about my life and made me more accomodating to his needs and it's not like when we weren't married I didn't give a shit.  Just, never did I imagine it would be like this. Before leaving for work tonight he says,

"I wanna quit my jooooob."
I thought to myself, 'that's my line!" Because it is.
So I replied, "You can't quit your job. I want to quit my job!"

As if I had dibbs on quitting and as if we're in any financial position for either of us to even think of quitting. Finally we agreed that whomever makes more money has to keep their job. That was his idea.

I agreed, "Ok. What hourly?" Considering he makes close to twice as much hourly than I would if you turned my salary into an hourly wage. 

I'd put him in a conundrum, but his response makes me think he'd already had this conversation with himself. Because he replies,

"Annually. We'll add up our W-2 forms from the past three years and whoever made more keeps their job."

Quite a well-thought out argument if I do say so myself. He must have gotten the idea from daytime TV (damn night jobs). So we're going to compare W-2's, but no, no one will be quitting. We've got a long way to go to financial freedom and looking at past W-2's certainly won't get us there.

The Myth of the Long Distance Relationship

The topic of long distance relationships (LDR) has been brought to my attention a couple of ways in the past few weeks and this last time I couldn't help but imagine Rick and me in that type of situation.  For a little background, the first mention of LDR was in a briefly interesting, but ultimately useless article featured on a search engine home page that I won't do the injustice of mentioning (Yahoo!*ahem).  Sponsored by one dating website or another the article told stories of unconventional yet seemingly successful relationship pairings.  One LDR was being practiced by a couple living across country from each other, but instead of saying they do their best to deal with it they actually claimed it was a choice they made that is best for their relationship.  Really? So you love someone so much that you marry them then decide it's best if you don't live in the same time zone?  The next example was of a psuedo-LDR in which the husband's obsessive cleaning habits made it impossible for him to live with his wife who was a bit messy, so he rented an apartment not far from her condo and dropped in every evening.  OK, as you can see the article went down hill from there.  That only solidified my belief that good LDR's are a myth made up by spouses who like to cheat in their hometown and they only end in disaster.

Then a much more plausible article came along courtesy of my new favorite magazine The Nest which I started receiving after our wedding thanks to my registration on TheKnot.com. In this article an actual psychologist (take note Yahoo! - ahem I mean nameless search engine) talked about a couple who found themselves faced with a tough decision not long after marrying.  The husband had his dream job in their town of residence, while the wife was offered a dream job opportunity in another state. It sounds innocent enough, but what does one do? If one person gives up what they perceive as their of-the-moment dream they could be permanently scorned. But is it selfish for both to pursue career aspirations while leaving their dream marriage waiting in the wings? In the end, they decided to do the latter, but on the advice of the psychologist spoke on the phone everyday - even if just to share those day-to-day tidbits that we typically ignore when shared in person, made frequent visits, weren't afraid of Skype-sex, and constantly reminded themselves that it was a temporary situation until they could figure something better. And there's the key: remembering that it's temporary.  Eventually, one's job may not seem like such a dream if it keeps you from the one you love...

Having seen firsthand the consequences an LDR can have on a marriage when my mom had the option of losing her job or moving with it from Chicago to St. Louis, I am adamently against LDR. But this 'hatred' wasn't just developed from the marriage standpoint alone. If you've ever read this blog you know that of my 10 aunts and uncles - and upteen cousins - on my mother's side not even a handful still live in the Chicago area. Same goes for my brother and sister. Neither live within a 4 hours drive of me.  Sometimes it's like not having family at all. From the moment I knew I loved Rick and Chicago I knew I would never take a job out of state, which is saying a lot considering I work for a global company that's in over100 countries worldwide.  The opportunities could be endless, but I walk around work with blinders on never really opening myself up to the possibility of a job not in Chicago. 

Personally, Rick and I can't even split up for the holidays.  Let alone for an extended period of time.  Rick once drove - after a Christmas Eve party with his family that went until wee hours and after dropping me off at the airport for a 6am flight - to my parent's house on Christmas day so he could be there by time I woke up that afternoon.  Thanksgiving before last Rick was called in to work at the last minute leaving me to drive my grandmother to St. Louis by myself and spend the holiday without him.  On the drive there I developed stress-induced shingles and a month later he proposed.  Clearly, we have no intention - or even the option - of being apart. And I guess that's fine. We'll live out our dreams side-by-side.

Happy Holidays from the Ramirez Family!

Rick and I got a nice little break this holiday season with my parents coming into town and his family having their usual Christmas Eve party. It was an easy split with my family's traditional Christmas Day party. No missed flights, no last minute calls from work, or no forlorn phone calls to one or the other's family hundreds of miles away. The usual suspects were absent. "Usual suspects" being overwhelmingly represented by my immediate family. Sister, brother, niece, nephew...we know the drill. The recentness of the wedding which brought a bunch of my family out of the woodwork makes the absentee pill a little easier to swallow.  Rick's family has outgrown any of each other's houses, so this year they utilized an old bar belonging to a family friend.  This is the same abandoned bar where Rick celebrated his Bachelor party.  When he told me the guys were concerned that the strippers wouldn't come inside the place I was sure that having the Christmas party there was out of the question.  I mean this bar hadn't been occupied - or even kept up - for years.  But after weeks of clean up and the decorating expertise of a family friend, it was surprisingly clean and festive. In all it was a really great time, although Christmas day was made quite difficult by the Christmas Eve party.

I've come to build an interesting relationship with Rick's oldest sister and her husband.  I'm actually becoming more and more aware of the relationships that I have with Rick's siblings as individuals.  With such a large crew it's hard to realize how you really interact with each person singularly.  Rick's oldest sister and her husband are the kind of people that we can stay up all night with just talking and drinking.  Not doing anything special; just sitting around the table, sipping good tequila, and talking about life.  Clearly all that talking got away from us because it was after 5am when we finally looked at the clock. With my parents coming to our house that morning to open gifts I knew we were in for a rough one. Rick was lucky enough to get a second wind once he got home and walked the dog at which time he insisted we open a few presents. We were two presents in when he started to fall asleep sitting up. By that time it was easily 6:30am.  My parents did us the justice of not showing up until around 11am, but we still were rather rough for the wear.  Opened presents then back to bed.  We weren't ourselves at my Grandmother's house, but it was probably better that we couldn't have any of my Dad's (knock-you-on-your-you-know-what) egg nog.  As usual  my family brought back many great memories and made even more.

Looking forward to the all the great things this New Year will bring.  On the menu so far: a real budget that should have us back in the market for a house before the next decade (yay!), a lot of Cancer killing, maybe a 'Cancer-cation', preparations for my Golden Birthday, babytalk (from everyone besides us), and much, much more to come!

Where the hell have you been???

That is the question I must ask myself as I finally return to this blog.  Where have I been and why am I here again? You'd think after so long I'd lose interest and give it up. Well, besides being extremely busy planning my own wedding - no I am not going to start a blog about the wedding, wedding planning, wedding day events, wedding memories, etc - I have also been battling with the decision of how public I'd like to make my private life.  I was quite taken aback when a potential business client entered a meeting with me for the first time and noticing the engagement ring on my finger said, "so he finally proposed." Immediately thoughts of terror ran through my mind.  Do I know him? Where from? What did I say or do when we met? My heartbeat slowed only slightly when he said he'd Google'd me before the meeting and came across all my blog posts.  Creepy. Not him but me! How creepy of me to post my personal relationship happenings on an all too public blog. But wait that's the point of these, right? Right...I almost forgot.  It was then that I began an internal dialogue as to whether or not blogging was actually for me. I was flattered when my potential client (who btw is head of his company's Internet marketing group so it's only appropriate that he would Google me before the meeting) told me that my style of writing engaged him enough to read all the posts and wonder what had been going on since my last post oh-so-long-ago.  But was flattery for my creative writing enough to keep me blabbing about our private life? I soon decided 'yes!' And then the other foot dropped.  After a beautiful wedding and in the middle of an amazing honeymoon we discovered something that I wasn't sure I wanted to blog about. 

Cancer.

While we'd been feverishly planning the wedding of my - a'hem - our dreams a very active tumor had begun growing on Rick's lung and eventually migrated also to his heart. It was a pain whose cause is to this day shrouded in mystery that caused us to rush my new husband to a Dominican emergency room 2 days into our honeymoon. After many a scan and x-ray even the doctors didn't know what to think. They wouldn't show us any results for fear that we may not be equipped handle such news. Better that we travel back home in blissful ignorance than in distraught depression. Once back home the U.S. doctors were much more realistic, if not cruel, having almost convinced us that Rick had a lung cancer caused by asbestos. One which has a death rate that you could take to Vegas. After doing some research we realized that was close to impossible and found ourselves in a much happier place with more caring and knowledgeable doctors at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. So far we've been happy with the treatment and if nothing else we've made some progress.

So let's get the basics out of the way now: (1) the doctors don't know what type of cancer it is. It has two different types of cancerous cells and it's lackluster response to the chemo treatment has made trial and error diagnosis unfeasible. We've coined it Rick Cancer - it's big, it's dense, it doesn't know what it wants to be, and just kinda sits there. Much like its host. (2) Rick isn't sick, he just has Cancer. When on Thanksgiving his sisters bawked at him going outside without a hat on his brother put it best when he exclaimed, "he's got Cancer, not pneumonia!" Rick is in amazing shape, he was losing his hair anyway, and he looks better bald - so no he doesn't 'look' like he has Cancer. (3) We're fine. Yes, he has Cancer and, yes, it's scary to think what we'll do if all these treatments don't work, but other than that it's fine.  (4) We don't feel like talking about it.  It will come up in conversation - and in this blog - (it's impossible for it not to) but it's not who we are so it's not all we feel like talking about. 

Whew - not that was therapeutic. Now we can move on.  Welcome back! Oh and Merry Christmas!

Lifting Weights Uses Lots of Energy

I'm remaining strong as my heart continues to be pulled in a million different directions. Every little comment I hear I'm able to align with some struggle going on in my head. There's a new George Clooney movie coming out (no to Mr. Fox or ...Stare at Goats...).  It's a movie where he once again plays an isolated loner, doing some sort of job no one else wants to do, and ignoring the fact that he's painfully lonely and falling in love. Clooney made a comment in the preview, when accused of being too selfish to get emotionally attached to the with a woman with whom he decided to have a racy affair and was obviously growing extremely fond of, about how the things in life that we get emotionally attached to are just there to weigh us down. Spouses, mortgages, best friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, family; all nice to have but in the end limiting to one's potential.

It made me think what is limiting me right now. Family and friends, definitely not I need those more than ever. Mortgage, yes, I realize now the freedom that comes with either no mortgage or a very affordable mortgage in a great economy. I'm thankful that I don't have trouble paying the mortgage, but feel suffocated by the fact that I can't do anything or go anywhere because of it. Boyfriend, do I feel weighed down by my relationship? Why would I. Rick is supportive and willing to try anything. He's ready to make this work where ever we may end up. So then what else is left? Well, there's me.

I'm sure this is what the Clooney movie ends on: "you are your own worst enemy, you are the only one who can stop you from doing anything to better yourself or to make yourself happy". I'm zapping my own energy and poor Rick, being the closest person to me, is forced to (though unknowingly) bear the brunt of the blame. Aye yi yi, what will I do with myself.  I'm starting by listening to the "Addressing Relationship Energy Drainers" podcast on my new fav go-to website Two of Us.org. Hoping this will help me realize what about me and my relationship seems to sucking my energy.

Support is More than being Supportive

I've come to realize that supporting someone in a relationship takes so much more effort than the occasional "good job" or "hang in there".  Supporting is the proactive art of realizing when your significant other is in need of support and having the energy to provide it.  For example, if your significant other decides to go back to school support isn't just telling them good job, it's turning off the TV to give them quiet study time or taking time out to help them make flashcards. Living with someone makes it even harder. It's difficult to always be there for them.  Sometimes we want to be selfish, and gosh-darn-it sometimes we need to be!  But more often than not we have to sacrifice our own selfish needs and be there for the person that we love.  If we don't have the energy to do that then maybe we need to re-evaluate why we're in a relationship.  It has to be more give than take for each person in order to make it work.

On top of that we have to be willing to accept the support that is offered to us.  When Rick notices that I've stopped studying for the GMAT after having gotten a less than acceptable score on a practice test, I can't just ignore his gentle pushes in the right direction.  Support isn't simply getting back rub or a shoulder to cry on all the time.  At some point support has to be a little tough to get you moving and motivated.  Who would have thought getting support would be just as hard as giving it? Relationships tend to complicate things in that way.

Second Job-arama

Rick is finally thinking of getting a second job during the slow season at work. I'm not as excited as I thought I'd be.  The thought of him taking on a second job doesn't make me as content as I thought it would.  Here I go again, getting exactly what I thought I wanted and not really wanting it at all.  I should just stop wanting altogether!  I just can't imagine him working at the Gap or the mall for the holiday season rush.  For some reason I'd rather picture him driving a Fred Sanford truck moving parts back and forth for the neighborhood body shop.  This is the image I have for him and I'm not sure why.  Nothing about Rick makes him seem like the stereotypical Hispanic working-man; driving a delivery truck or landscaping a lawn. And why would I want to view him in this way? Have I become such a product of stereotypes that I'm losing the real-life image of the man that I love?