Cliff Jumper

Today was a stressful day.

Not that things went particularly badly. Things are actually going pretty well these days. We managed last month to scrape up enough monetary loot to secure an apartment. We are now the proud renters of a two-bedroom, one-bathroom flat on the south side of town, barely two blocks from the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment we moved out of just thirteen months ago. I look at it more as a new beginning than a step back, considering what we learned over the course of the last year and what we now know about rent houses. And it comes in a nick of time too. The four of us adults in the house were trying very hard not to drive each other crazy, after a couple failed attempts between me and my sister. To ice the cake, we also received our W-2s and filed our tax return quickly enough to have the refund in the bank on moving day, with the unprecedented benefits of joint filing and earned income credit. The move went smoothly, thanks in part to the aforementioned refund, and the new place is coming together nicely, despite the boxes we haven't yet gotten around to unpacking. We are quite comfortable for the time being, and worlds more comfortable than we were a month ago. My sister complimented me the other night on how cute the new place was looking. I agreed and told her we owed ourselves a cute place. And it is cute and cozy and very us.

But of course, we still have issues with which to contend, some old, some new, some welcome, some pains in the ass albeit expected ones. My husband is as of yet unemployed. I am still barely self-employed. He still wants more help with the finances. I still want more help with the house and childcare. On a week-long getaway to my parents' house over the holidays we actually managed to establish that we do want the same things in life, for the most part. Our problems remain in the strategic department; my husband does not concern himself much with how to go about getting them. This is a constant source of frustration for me, because I feel like we'd be unstoppable if he did. I have big dreams and lack the will to achieve them. My husband has a will of steel and no dreams.

Today my husband executed his plans of ridding our storage unit of some more of our stuff. He was gone for hours, running these and other errands. I had plans of my own for today, but of course I spent the day taking care of Lucy and getting little else done. This has been the routine for the last week or so. Now that we are in our new home with most if not all of the things we need to live, now that running back and forth between old house and new house and storage unit is not so much a priority, finishing the move has been a question of whoever can get out of the house while the other keeps a watchful eye on our budding toddler. And whoever gets to leave usually gets more of their own stuff brought into the house and more of their own projects accomplished. Although I did not choose to turn today into one, there have been conflicts over who gets to leave. My husband's argument is that we're both working toward the same goal, so what does it matter when and how things get done? I should do my thing, and he should do his, and together we'll get the work finished. What he forgets is that while he does his thing day after day after day, I have my hands too full to do mine.

I try, but constant interruptions get in my way. As I follow a crawling Lucy from room to room, I try to do whatever needs doing where I am, but the work stops as soon as she embarks on her next adventure. If she's awake it's just as impossible to get anything done as it was when she was two months old and eating every two hours around the clock. If she's asleep I crave rest, and sometimes I can't bring myself to try to power-clean or power-write or power-job-hunt for the whole hour or half-hour or two hours she may or may not sleep. And if she falls and bumps her head, or if I upset her by whisking her away from the electrical cord she wants to play with, or if she makes a beeline for the litter box, all bets are off. Whatever I'm doing must be dropped without a thought. For a person like me who always worries about doing better, seeing things left undone can be quite discouraging, but today I tried to shake it off. If I could just get one thing done, the day wouldn't be a total loss of productivity.

I started decorating one wall of my daughter's new bedroom. No, it did not get done. I started the job while keeping one eye on Lucy. Interruptions. Then my husband came home, decided I had everything under control, and went to his computer. More interruptions. Finally I got him to take over Lucy. Then I couldn't get the stepladder to work and got frustrated enough to quit it. Then I messed up with the automatic screwdriver and lost one of the screws I needed, only to find our screws apparently haven't made it out of their box yet, wherever that is. By this time I just wanted a cup of tea and maybe ten minutes alone in front of the TV or something before I had to start cooking dinner. I didn't exactly get that either. So my plans were thwarted for another day.

While I was stressing out over folding up the stupid stepladder a vision of my life flashed through my head. I saw myself standing at the edge of a cliff, with my dreams sitting on another cliff across a great canyon. Since I'm not very good at building bridges or flying (whether it's because I'm not confident enough to try it or because I'm really not very good at it), I often try to get across the hard way or the most obvious way, or maybe both. Sometimes I climb to the bottom and try to cross the canyon and climb up the other side. Sometimes I take a leap of faith and just hope to hit the other side, crazy as the journey may be. However I do it, I usually end up on the bottom of the canyon, and sometimes when I'm down there, I lose sight of where I was trying to get in the first place. My college education, for example, was a climb from the bottom. Having my daughter and leaving my day job was a leap of faith.

And marrying my husband? Sometimes I feel he'd rather just stand on the cliff and enjoy the view than climb or jump with me. But I guess I'll always have him up there to give me perspective and direction when I'm down at the bottom, and maybe throw me a rope, and if I'm lucky, he'll pull me up. At least I hope so.