So I've told you all the bad decisions I've made, but I haven't talked about what I'm doing now, work-wise. I am an adjunct instructor at a community college. I edit books as a freelancer as well. This was another bad decision I made, by the way. My plan was to finish grad school when Tom was small and then get a full-time teaching position. I didn't take two things into account: 1) Mark lost his job and I could not keep paying for my doctoral studies, so I am somewhere between an undeclared master's degree and a doctorate; and 2) it makes no sense to go back, because there are pretty much no full-time positions out there. Unless you have some weird specialty that is currently in demand.
Instead, I get to go teach my classes for about a fourth of what the full-timers make, with no benefits. The consolation is that the education industry is so screwed up that I have a whole lot of company. Regardless of what the union tells you, here is the truth: Adjunct instructors, some with excellent credentials and some with dubious credentials, make up about 75% of the instructors at community colleges. The other 25% are full-time faculty. So that the college is not accused of getting around paying benefits to adjuncts who are really full-time, we are only allowed to teach 75-80% of the load of a full-time instructor. A part-timer, therefore, has about 12 class-hours, or 3 classes per week to a full-timer's 4 classes per week. The adjunct must be observed, and must follow minimum guidelines for paper assignments, etc. The full-timers, for their 25% additional class time, are paid about four times the salary and receive incredible benefits. Once they make tenure, they are never reviewed or observed and cannot be fired except under extreme circumstances. They can bunch their classes so they are only on campus two or three days a week. And they never have to retire. I don't know why they don't retire anyway, because education is one of the last places where you can still get a defined benefit pension, and it's a really good one. But a lot of people evidently want to keep coming to their offices, even those who don't want to work, so there are no full-time positions opening up.
Why am I telling you all this? Because it drives me crazy! It turns out that I am a good teacher. I care and I work hard to make sure my students learn. For three classes, I probably work about a forty-hour work week (this will go down somewhat as I teach the same classes over again). But I can't live on what I'm paid for that work week, and the guy in the next office is making quite a nice living and giving fewer assignments so he doesn't have to grade. And it's all your tax dollars! A big part of the reason for all of this is that people have been sold a bill of goods as far as education is concerned. Everyone thinks they need degrees, but they have no interest in or ability for real, college-level study. So they come to us---thirteenth grade. When they get out, many of them are surprised to find that everyone out in the real world knows it's thirteenth grade. They can't get jobs that go instead to the graduates of Stanford or even the good state schools. And if they do well enough, they can go to those state schools for their last two years (the community colleges are two-year schools), but they find that, lo and behold, a lot of their credits don't transfer because, again, everyone knows that "college math" at the community college was what people were supposed to learn by ninth grade. So what is the purpose, then? To give a few people who would be otherwise unemployable really cushy jobs. And to keep kids off the streets until they mature a little.
And since I know all of this, I am a part of the problem. But, hey, would you want unemployment to go up even more?
Monday, April 26, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
What I Love about Steve
So Steve read my post about his anger-management problems and, you guessed it, got a little angry. Not door-breaking angry, but sort of hurt-angry. I think he also read a comment someone made, where she told me to dump him. Well the problem with a blog is that is it necessarily one-sided, and usually written when passions are running high. So you're going to get a skewed view. Remember in Bridget Jones's Diary (my all-time favorite movie---Jenna and I saw it in theaters over fifteen times), when Mark Darcy reads Bridget's diary and gets miffed? Bridget had been angry at something Mark did and wrote really awful things about him in the diary. He walked out after reading the diary, but then did something that very few people do---he reflected on the incident.
And that's one of the things I love about Steve. He's a hothead, absolutely. So, for that matter, is Jenna, who has been my closest friend for over thirty years. It's the way they are. Mark (my ex, not Mark Darcy) is the opposite of a hothead. You never even feel like he's listening to what you are saying; you can't get a reaction. A lot of times, I used to end up screaming at him because I just wanted to know he was paying attention. I never have that problem with Steve. And please don't tell me that there's never an excuse for violence and Steve broke a door. He broke the door; he didn't lay a finger on me! I, who generally do not have that kind of explosive temper, once flung a plate of spaghetti at Mark. And Jenna takes the cake. She once, in a fit of premenstrual pique, picked up a 19-inch television, carried it down the stairs, and threw it out into the snow.
So, anyway, what I love about Steve is that he always takes what I say seriously and then tries to do the right thing. This relationship has been very difficult because of all kinds of external things. Let's face it, both of us have failed at past relationships. So it's so nice that, even if he gets mad upon first hearing or reading, he goes back and regroups. Many times, because I am unable to articulate what is bothering me, I send him e-mails. He responds to each point I make using a different color and sends it back to me. You might not like that, but I do. So this time, I told him I wasn't feeling very appreciated for my good points. All I wanted was for him to tell me what it was that he liked about me. We all tend to focus on people's shortcomings; it takes a conscious effort to instead remember the good things, and then to share them with the other person. Since then, that is what Steve has been doing. I love getting the e-mails (again, the way he sends me most of these little notes).
Examples:
I love your sense of humour and I love that we laugh at the same things.
You are a very caring, nice person. I admire you for that.
I like that you do not seem to have the same hangups that other women have about my "roving eye." All men are like this, and it's nice that you recognize that some men just hide the looking better. (More on this in a later blog.)
These are things I think are good about me, and it's nice that Steve appreciates them. I have sent Steve some of the things I admire as well. I've told him I like his enthusiasm for life, his sense of wonder at learning new things, and his sense of humor (I spell it the American way, LOL).
Yesterday, he left a little post-it with a heart on it on my PC so that I found it after he went to work. Then, later in the day, he sent me a poem. Not just any poem, but one that I had sent him back when our love was new and exciting: John Donne's "The Good Morrow":
I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
All of this made my heart beat faster and remember why we put ourselves through all this trouble. We really are each other's world. But sometimes it's hard to "watch not one another out of fear." Everyone have doubts, but amor vincit omnia.
And that's one of the things I love about Steve. He's a hothead, absolutely. So, for that matter, is Jenna, who has been my closest friend for over thirty years. It's the way they are. Mark (my ex, not Mark Darcy) is the opposite of a hothead. You never even feel like he's listening to what you are saying; you can't get a reaction. A lot of times, I used to end up screaming at him because I just wanted to know he was paying attention. I never have that problem with Steve. And please don't tell me that there's never an excuse for violence and Steve broke a door. He broke the door; he didn't lay a finger on me! I, who generally do not have that kind of explosive temper, once flung a plate of spaghetti at Mark. And Jenna takes the cake. She once, in a fit of premenstrual pique, picked up a 19-inch television, carried it down the stairs, and threw it out into the snow.
So, anyway, what I love about Steve is that he always takes what I say seriously and then tries to do the right thing. This relationship has been very difficult because of all kinds of external things. Let's face it, both of us have failed at past relationships. So it's so nice that, even if he gets mad upon first hearing or reading, he goes back and regroups. Many times, because I am unable to articulate what is bothering me, I send him e-mails. He responds to each point I make using a different color and sends it back to me. You might not like that, but I do. So this time, I told him I wasn't feeling very appreciated for my good points. All I wanted was for him to tell me what it was that he liked about me. We all tend to focus on people's shortcomings; it takes a conscious effort to instead remember the good things, and then to share them with the other person. Since then, that is what Steve has been doing. I love getting the e-mails (again, the way he sends me most of these little notes).
Examples:
I love your sense of humour and I love that we laugh at the same things.
You are a very caring, nice person. I admire you for that.
I like that you do not seem to have the same hangups that other women have about my "roving eye." All men are like this, and it's nice that you recognize that some men just hide the looking better. (More on this in a later blog.)
These are things I think are good about me, and it's nice that Steve appreciates them. I have sent Steve some of the things I admire as well. I've told him I like his enthusiasm for life, his sense of wonder at learning new things, and his sense of humor (I spell it the American way, LOL).
Yesterday, he left a little post-it with a heart on it on my PC so that I found it after he went to work. Then, later in the day, he sent me a poem. Not just any poem, but one that I had sent him back when our love was new and exciting: John Donne's "The Good Morrow":
I WONDER by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved ? were we not wean'd till then ?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly ?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den ?
'Twas so ; but this, all pleasures fancies be ;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear ;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone ;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown ;
Let us possess one world ; each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest ;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west ?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally ;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.
All of this made my heart beat faster and remember why we put ourselves through all this trouble. We really are each other's world. But sometimes it's hard to "watch not one another out of fear." Everyone have doubts, but amor vincit omnia.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
A Short Fuse and a Large Chip on His Shoulder
Hear that? That's the sound of the other shoe dropping. Or the sound of people clapping, if you think I haven't been punished for my actions (I know my sister's out there!) If you read through my last couple of blogs, I know you were thinking it was all too good to be true. I mean, there's a man shortage, according to all the women's magazines, and men go for younger women, etc., etc. For a while, when I was feeling smugly superior (as loving and being loved as a tendency to do to us), I would have told you, "Well, it's because of my attitude---that's what attracts men---a positive, enthusiastic attitude." Or, if I were feeling mushier, I'd have said that it was sheer dumb luck that brought Steve and me together, but we were the people that were meant to be together---soul mates. And I guess I would still say that. But let me tell you, it hasn't all been a bed of roses.
So what's the problem? Well, one of the bigger problems is Steve's temper. Or lack of tolerance. Or both. Here's an example: the reason I haven't posted over the last several days is because the Internet connection was down. These things happen. It was a pain in the butt for me, because I had a deadline yesterday and ended up going to Panera (they have free wifi, thank heavens) during a two-hour break in my day and rushing through the stuff I had to send. Steve is really good about trying to fix things when they break, but sometimes he works on them for too long when it becomes obvious we're going to need outside help. So he went and got a new wireless router, because he thought that might be the problem, and it turned out not to be. We ended up having to call Comcast and I had to wait home for them yesterday. No big deal, as long as my deadline was met. And for Steve, it meant checking his e-mails over the weekend on his iPhone and then going to work on Monday and using the wifi there. Really no big deal. But he gets frustrated and then reminds me of a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. Nothing is right. So, he did that and then had trouble with a light fixture (that was, admittedly, poorly installed by our corner-cutting landlord). The combination was enough to send him into a frenzy. I watched and said, "Sorry" a bunch of times. Here's the conversation:
"This shoddy construction bothers me, but it doesn't seem to bother you!
"You're right, it is shoddy, I just don't think there's anything we can do about it!"
"I've had enough---I'm going to the pub!" (Funny that the minute an Englishman wants to storm out, he reverts to going to the pub, even though we don't actually have one.)
"Can I come with you?"
"I thought you were working." (The deadline to which I was referring.)
"Yeah, but I'm almost done---I could go." (My mistake.)
"I'm sorry. I wouldn't be very good company."
"OK, then, go. No problem." He storms out. He's gone for a few minutes. He storms back in.
"I figure if I'm going to sit outside someplace, it may as well be here." He takes the paper and goes outside. I continue working. Now when I said I was "almost finished," I had maybe an hour of work left to do. I knew I'd be able to get it done by Tuesday (this was Sunday). The big problem was going to be coordinating waiting for the Comcast guy and going to Panera to send stuff in.
So about twenty minutes later, Steve came back in from the patio and says, "I thought you said you were almost finished! How long are you going to be? I've been waiting for you!" Remember, he wasn't waiting for me---at least as far as I know. He'd told me I wasn't welcome.
All this probably seems like no big deal to you, and I admit, I am overly sensitive about being yelled at, but if this is where it ended, it would be no big deal. Instead, after a bunch of back-and-forth good mood/bad mood episodes, by the time we go to bed, Steve has worked himself up into a frenzy and the belief that absolutely everything is my fault. And this is where it starts to get really, really frustrating. We repeat patterns, they say, and the way I act when Steve gets into these moods is the way I acted as a child with my mother. The reason for that is they both do the same thing. I remember my mother saying to me one time, "I'm sorry, Katherine." As I started to say, "That's OK, Mom," she continued, "I'm sorry Katherine, but I just don't like you."
Steve, that night, said, "I'm sorry, Kate." I thought he was apologizing for his bad mood until he continued,"This (our relationship) is no good. It's not working out." As he veers from mood to mood, I walk around on tiptoes. Until I get so frustrated I start calling him names. (I didn't do that with my mother.) He becomes more and more generally hurtful. I am stupid, superior-acting, incompetent, "No wonder Mark didn't like you," etc., etc. I crumble under these attacks, which just makes it worse. Here are some of the results of the last couple of years: He got mad at something minor in a restaurant and started saying such nasty things to me I started crying. We left the restaurant with him even more nasty and mad, and he backed his car into someone else's car in the parking lot. Hard. That was an expensive tantrum. Another time, he kept yelling at me---Oh, not yelling. He accuses me of yelling and says he never does---reprimanding me and it was getting worse and worse, so I went upstairs. He followed so I locked myself in Tom's room and he broke down the door so he could keep yelling at---oops, reprimanding---me.
So I can be annoying. My whiny "don't yell at me" attitude is probably hard to live with when you're spoiling for a fight. But Steve is impossible. The fact that I am an innocent bystander to his frustration and I end up being the person responsible for all his dissatisfaction drives me crazy. And women are supposed to be the ones who bring up the kitchen sink in arguments, so why is it that, when I argue with Steve, something that starts out with the Internet not working ends up with a discussion of my shortcomings? The problem is, I'd like to fight back, but I am cowed. I forgive almost before the end of an argument.
Disclaimer: Steve and I have been discussing this, and while I feel cowed, his take on it is that he doesn't like to bring things up because of my "attacks of vitriol." What I see is that after he goes at me for quite a while, if I don't start crying, I start fighting back. And once I get into that mode, I am pretty cutting. I do say things that are vitriolic on those occasions. But I think that's been between four and six times since we've been together. Most of the time, I know he's starting to get mad and I start to try to make him happy. It's just the way I am; I can barely remember what made me mad. But Steve nurses his grudges. He can be completely unreasonable and mad at the world in general and taking it out on me, but the next morning, when I try to act as if nothing happened, he is the one who is still mad. I absolutely hate this cycle, because I am back to my childhood, trying to keep both my parents from getting mad because it is so unpleasant. But I don't know how to make everything more balanced. Any suggestions?
So what's the problem? Well, one of the bigger problems is Steve's temper. Or lack of tolerance. Or both. Here's an example: the reason I haven't posted over the last several days is because the Internet connection was down. These things happen. It was a pain in the butt for me, because I had a deadline yesterday and ended up going to Panera (they have free wifi, thank heavens) during a two-hour break in my day and rushing through the stuff I had to send. Steve is really good about trying to fix things when they break, but sometimes he works on them for too long when it becomes obvious we're going to need outside help. So he went and got a new wireless router, because he thought that might be the problem, and it turned out not to be. We ended up having to call Comcast and I had to wait home for them yesterday. No big deal, as long as my deadline was met. And for Steve, it meant checking his e-mails over the weekend on his iPhone and then going to work on Monday and using the wifi there. Really no big deal. But he gets frustrated and then reminds me of a two-year-old having a temper tantrum. Nothing is right. So, he did that and then had trouble with a light fixture (that was, admittedly, poorly installed by our corner-cutting landlord). The combination was enough to send him into a frenzy. I watched and said, "Sorry" a bunch of times. Here's the conversation:
"This shoddy construction bothers me, but it doesn't seem to bother you!
"You're right, it is shoddy, I just don't think there's anything we can do about it!"
"I've had enough---I'm going to the pub!" (Funny that the minute an Englishman wants to storm out, he reverts to going to the pub, even though we don't actually have one.)
"Can I come with you?"
"I thought you were working." (The deadline to which I was referring.)
"Yeah, but I'm almost done---I could go." (My mistake.)
"I'm sorry. I wouldn't be very good company."
"OK, then, go. No problem." He storms out. He's gone for a few minutes. He storms back in.
"I figure if I'm going to sit outside someplace, it may as well be here." He takes the paper and goes outside. I continue working. Now when I said I was "almost finished," I had maybe an hour of work left to do. I knew I'd be able to get it done by Tuesday (this was Sunday). The big problem was going to be coordinating waiting for the Comcast guy and going to Panera to send stuff in.
So about twenty minutes later, Steve came back in from the patio and says, "I thought you said you were almost finished! How long are you going to be? I've been waiting for you!" Remember, he wasn't waiting for me---at least as far as I know. He'd told me I wasn't welcome.
All this probably seems like no big deal to you, and I admit, I am overly sensitive about being yelled at, but if this is where it ended, it would be no big deal. Instead, after a bunch of back-and-forth good mood/bad mood episodes, by the time we go to bed, Steve has worked himself up into a frenzy and the belief that absolutely everything is my fault. And this is where it starts to get really, really frustrating. We repeat patterns, they say, and the way I act when Steve gets into these moods is the way I acted as a child with my mother. The reason for that is they both do the same thing. I remember my mother saying to me one time, "I'm sorry, Katherine." As I started to say, "That's OK, Mom," she continued, "I'm sorry Katherine, but I just don't like you."
Steve, that night, said, "I'm sorry, Kate." I thought he was apologizing for his bad mood until he continued,"This (our relationship) is no good. It's not working out." As he veers from mood to mood, I walk around on tiptoes. Until I get so frustrated I start calling him names. (I didn't do that with my mother.) He becomes more and more generally hurtful. I am stupid, superior-acting, incompetent, "No wonder Mark didn't like you," etc., etc. I crumble under these attacks, which just makes it worse. Here are some of the results of the last couple of years: He got mad at something minor in a restaurant and started saying such nasty things to me I started crying. We left the restaurant with him even more nasty and mad, and he backed his car into someone else's car in the parking lot. Hard. That was an expensive tantrum. Another time, he kept yelling at me---Oh, not yelling. He accuses me of yelling and says he never does---reprimanding me and it was getting worse and worse, so I went upstairs. He followed so I locked myself in Tom's room and he broke down the door so he could keep yelling at---oops, reprimanding---me.
So I can be annoying. My whiny "don't yell at me" attitude is probably hard to live with when you're spoiling for a fight. But Steve is impossible. The fact that I am an innocent bystander to his frustration and I end up being the person responsible for all his dissatisfaction drives me crazy. And women are supposed to be the ones who bring up the kitchen sink in arguments, so why is it that, when I argue with Steve, something that starts out with the Internet not working ends up with a discussion of my shortcomings? The problem is, I'd like to fight back, but I am cowed. I forgive almost before the end of an argument.
Disclaimer: Steve and I have been discussing this, and while I feel cowed, his take on it is that he doesn't like to bring things up because of my "attacks of vitriol." What I see is that after he goes at me for quite a while, if I don't start crying, I start fighting back. And once I get into that mode, I am pretty cutting. I do say things that are vitriolic on those occasions. But I think that's been between four and six times since we've been together. Most of the time, I know he's starting to get mad and I start to try to make him happy. It's just the way I am; I can barely remember what made me mad. But Steve nurses his grudges. He can be completely unreasonable and mad at the world in general and taking it out on me, but the next morning, when I try to act as if nothing happened, he is the one who is still mad. I absolutely hate this cycle, because I am back to my childhood, trying to keep both my parents from getting mad because it is so unpleasant. But I don't know how to make everything more balanced. Any suggestions?
Friday, April 9, 2010
Money Makes the World Go Around
Have you ever noticed that the people who tell you that money can't buy happiness always have more money than they could possibly spend? I swear it's their way of keeping the hoi polloi from revolting. Sure, money can't solve other problems you may have, but think about it---even problems like being sick are made easier with money. At least you can buy the best medical care there is without having to take up a collection. And people swallow it---"Oh, I lost my job and the electricity is going to be shut off, but look at poor Sandra Bullock. Money can't buy happiness." No, but it sure makes unhappiness easier to bear. Your husband may be stepping out on you, too, and having the lights turned off won't make it any easier. Sandy can go to Canyon Ranch to forget about her troubles for a month if she wants.
Steve and I came into this relationship from very different places, moneywise. At one time, I was doing OK. I was never going to be CEO of a company, but I was making a good living and I had a fair amount of money in my 401K and savings plan. I took nice trips and went to the ballet. I bought my co-op in Brooklyn Heights (supposedly at the bottom of the market, but real estate bottoms always occur when a McMahon is trying to sell). Then I married Mark. When we met, as I've said, he was making substantially less than I. But he really liked the business world and I didn't, and he was getting his MBA. By the time I got pregnant, Mark had moved on to a better job, still making slightly less than I was, but he had a future. We were living in my co-op and things were comfortable. We had money (OK, I had money) saved up. There were warning signs. When we were planning the wedding, I kept putting the brakes on and he kept wanting to spend more. I thought it was nice that he wanted a big wedding, so I relented and dipped into my savings to pay for it. I paid for the honeymoon, too. It never really occurred to me that this spending habit of Mark's might get us into trouble.
A bunch of things happened that started getting us a little more behind: first, Mark really wanted to move to the suburbs. I loved Brooklyn, but the co-op was really not big enough once Tom started growing. Well, as I said, the bottom of the market can pretty much be determined by when I decide to sell. We couldn't sell and rented it out, but our co-op board decided somewhat capriciously not to let us continue to rent, even though our neighbors were renting. We sold at a slight loss about six months before the market started to take off. Two years after we'd sold, we could have made three or four times the price I'd paid. Still, things were not bad, we still had some money, and we bought a modest house in the same town I'd grown up in. What I didn't know was that the schools in the town I'd grown up in had changed from mediocre to really, really bad. I was working part-time from home at this point and Mark was still doing well at work. My first clue that the schools were not that great was when I took a job teaching test prep at the school and found out that they'd taken the doors off the toilet stalls so that teachers could always see what the kids were doing. Then Jenna's son got beaten up on a school bus and the bus driver did nothing. We decided to send Tom to private school.
Then the s- started hitting the proverbial fan. First, I lost my part-time job; they decided they wanted someone to be in the office, first one day a week (OK), then full-time. The office I would have to be in was 60 miles from the house. Mark was working in New York, so it didn't seem like a good idea to be working that far from Tom, and to be honest, I didn't want to be away from Tom all day. At this point, I should probably have figured out a way to make a comparable salary close to home, but I didn't. Instead, I started being a part-time everything. I did some work putting PowerPoint presentations together for people, I taught some classes, I tutored. We were still OK, but I was starting to notice Mark's bad habit of earmarking every $500 for $1500 worth of purchases. You know what I mean: he gets told he's getting a $10K bonus. He tells me he "deserves" a trip because he's been working hard, so even though I just wanted to pay off bills, we go to Italy (we don't spend much on these trips, but still ...). I don't feel like I can say anything because I am not making most of the money. This will become a common theme. You'd think it would have occurred to me that maybe I should figure out how to make more money. Anyway, remember, it's a $10K bonus. That means roughly $7K after taxes. So we take the $3K vacation. Then he decides he needs more of a wardrobe to "present the correct image." He goes out and buys two suits and about 10 Ralph Lauren $85 shirts. There goes another couple of thousand. What does he do next? Decide he needs a new car. By the time he's finished, his $10K bonus has added another $2K to our debt. Plus a lease payment every month.
Meanwhile, while I didn't spend money on myself, I did spend it on Tom. There are very few relatives on both sides and the grandparents who were there didn't lavish Tom with gifts the way some grandparents do. So I tried to make up for it. I admit it, I spent too much there, but when it's your first child, no matter how many people tell you, you don't realize that by the time you pay off his "Thomas the Tank Engine" train set, he will have long since outgrown it. Besides, at that point, I was still optimistically thinking there would be more kids. After all, I'd gotten pregnant with Tom immediately, so I'd have only needed one or two more 5-minute bouts of passion to create a sibling for Tom. Well, I have no way of knowing if that would have been the case, but if I had had another child, things would be even more complicated.
Anyway, we were hobbling along, not paying off our credit cards, but doing all right. We enrolled Tom in a private school. I went back to school to get my certification to teach. Mark found a new expensive hobby---digital photography. Then he lost his job. Five times in about seven years. As I write this, he has been out of work since last May. That didn't stop him from taking Tom on a great trip last June, but it means he is $15K behind on alimony and child support. Every time he loses his job, he calls it a layoff, but he is the only one laid off. And it takes him the better part of a year to find a new job.
I quit school without finishing and started taking more adjunct teaching jobs. And in case you're wondering why he was paying me alimony anyway, it's pretend alimony. By the time we split up, he'd incurred about $50K of credit card debt. He kept refinancing the house, so that there is now a $260K mortgage on a house we paid $160K for. The market crashed; we can't sell the house or even fix it up a little. He is still living there. I agreed to let him pay me $2000 a month in "pretend" alimony and I would pay the credit cards off ($1000 a month on a debt-management plan) and pay for Tom's tuition, or at least a substantial portion of it. He would get the tax write-off. So now, he's long-term unemployed (again), not paying me anything (asks me to give Tom food money when he goes to visit him), and I am stuck with the credit card payments. The school has been very nice and patient about the tuition. I'm making more money now, but Steve is pretty much paying for me (and Tom) to live. And that's where the problem is. I pay as much as I possibly can for groceries, etc., but after the credit card payment and all the expenses that go with raising a teenager, that's not all that much. I tried for quite a while to get a full-time with-benefits job, even one way below what I'd been making 15 years ago, and could not even get a call back. If I'd actually been on interviews, I'd think I was doing something wrong. What I'm doing wrong, it seems, is trying to find a job after the age of 50.
As you can imagine, this has caused a lot of stress in our relationship. I feel constantly like I'm not contributing enough. Steve, at times, feels ill-used. And Mark? Well, Mark thinks he needs a vacation. Thank heavens, he'd just bought himself a brand new luxury car before he lost his job, or he'd need a new car, too.
Steve and I came into this relationship from very different places, moneywise. At one time, I was doing OK. I was never going to be CEO of a company, but I was making a good living and I had a fair amount of money in my 401K and savings plan. I took nice trips and went to the ballet. I bought my co-op in Brooklyn Heights (supposedly at the bottom of the market, but real estate bottoms always occur when a McMahon is trying to sell). Then I married Mark. When we met, as I've said, he was making substantially less than I. But he really liked the business world and I didn't, and he was getting his MBA. By the time I got pregnant, Mark had moved on to a better job, still making slightly less than I was, but he had a future. We were living in my co-op and things were comfortable. We had money (OK, I had money) saved up. There were warning signs. When we were planning the wedding, I kept putting the brakes on and he kept wanting to spend more. I thought it was nice that he wanted a big wedding, so I relented and dipped into my savings to pay for it. I paid for the honeymoon, too. It never really occurred to me that this spending habit of Mark's might get us into trouble.
A bunch of things happened that started getting us a little more behind: first, Mark really wanted to move to the suburbs. I loved Brooklyn, but the co-op was really not big enough once Tom started growing. Well, as I said, the bottom of the market can pretty much be determined by when I decide to sell. We couldn't sell and rented it out, but our co-op board decided somewhat capriciously not to let us continue to rent, even though our neighbors were renting. We sold at a slight loss about six months before the market started to take off. Two years after we'd sold, we could have made three or four times the price I'd paid. Still, things were not bad, we still had some money, and we bought a modest house in the same town I'd grown up in. What I didn't know was that the schools in the town I'd grown up in had changed from mediocre to really, really bad. I was working part-time from home at this point and Mark was still doing well at work. My first clue that the schools were not that great was when I took a job teaching test prep at the school and found out that they'd taken the doors off the toilet stalls so that teachers could always see what the kids were doing. Then Jenna's son got beaten up on a school bus and the bus driver did nothing. We decided to send Tom to private school.
Then the s- started hitting the proverbial fan. First, I lost my part-time job; they decided they wanted someone to be in the office, first one day a week (OK), then full-time. The office I would have to be in was 60 miles from the house. Mark was working in New York, so it didn't seem like a good idea to be working that far from Tom, and to be honest, I didn't want to be away from Tom all day. At this point, I should probably have figured out a way to make a comparable salary close to home, but I didn't. Instead, I started being a part-time everything. I did some work putting PowerPoint presentations together for people, I taught some classes, I tutored. We were still OK, but I was starting to notice Mark's bad habit of earmarking every $500 for $1500 worth of purchases. You know what I mean: he gets told he's getting a $10K bonus. He tells me he "deserves" a trip because he's been working hard, so even though I just wanted to pay off bills, we go to Italy (we don't spend much on these trips, but still ...). I don't feel like I can say anything because I am not making most of the money. This will become a common theme. You'd think it would have occurred to me that maybe I should figure out how to make more money. Anyway, remember, it's a $10K bonus. That means roughly $7K after taxes. So we take the $3K vacation. Then he decides he needs more of a wardrobe to "present the correct image." He goes out and buys two suits and about 10 Ralph Lauren $85 shirts. There goes another couple of thousand. What does he do next? Decide he needs a new car. By the time he's finished, his $10K bonus has added another $2K to our debt. Plus a lease payment every month.
Meanwhile, while I didn't spend money on myself, I did spend it on Tom. There are very few relatives on both sides and the grandparents who were there didn't lavish Tom with gifts the way some grandparents do. So I tried to make up for it. I admit it, I spent too much there, but when it's your first child, no matter how many people tell you, you don't realize that by the time you pay off his "Thomas the Tank Engine" train set, he will have long since outgrown it. Besides, at that point, I was still optimistically thinking there would be more kids. After all, I'd gotten pregnant with Tom immediately, so I'd have only needed one or two more 5-minute bouts of passion to create a sibling for Tom. Well, I have no way of knowing if that would have been the case, but if I had had another child, things would be even more complicated.
Anyway, we were hobbling along, not paying off our credit cards, but doing all right. We enrolled Tom in a private school. I went back to school to get my certification to teach. Mark found a new expensive hobby---digital photography. Then he lost his job. Five times in about seven years. As I write this, he has been out of work since last May. That didn't stop him from taking Tom on a great trip last June, but it means he is $15K behind on alimony and child support. Every time he loses his job, he calls it a layoff, but he is the only one laid off. And it takes him the better part of a year to find a new job.
I quit school without finishing and started taking more adjunct teaching jobs. And in case you're wondering why he was paying me alimony anyway, it's pretend alimony. By the time we split up, he'd incurred about $50K of credit card debt. He kept refinancing the house, so that there is now a $260K mortgage on a house we paid $160K for. The market crashed; we can't sell the house or even fix it up a little. He is still living there. I agreed to let him pay me $2000 a month in "pretend" alimony and I would pay the credit cards off ($1000 a month on a debt-management plan) and pay for Tom's tuition, or at least a substantial portion of it. He would get the tax write-off. So now, he's long-term unemployed (again), not paying me anything (asks me to give Tom food money when he goes to visit him), and I am stuck with the credit card payments. The school has been very nice and patient about the tuition. I'm making more money now, but Steve is pretty much paying for me (and Tom) to live. And that's where the problem is. I pay as much as I possibly can for groceries, etc., but after the credit card payment and all the expenses that go with raising a teenager, that's not all that much. I tried for quite a while to get a full-time with-benefits job, even one way below what I'd been making 15 years ago, and could not even get a call back. If I'd actually been on interviews, I'd think I was doing something wrong. What I'm doing wrong, it seems, is trying to find a job after the age of 50.
As you can imagine, this has caused a lot of stress in our relationship. I feel constantly like I'm not contributing enough. Steve, at times, feels ill-used. And Mark? Well, Mark thinks he needs a vacation. Thank heavens, he'd just bought himself a brand new luxury car before he lost his job, or he'd need a new car, too.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Soul Mates
So what do I mean when I say Steve and I are soul mates? I may get a little mushy here, so if you have a low tolerance for such things, move on to the next post. I'm sure I'll be complaining about something again soon! What I mean is that our thoughts are connected in so many ways. The first thing I noticed was that we shared a sense of humor. Now that may not seem like much to you, but a lot of people don't get my jokes. I may have laughed at Mark during our relationship, but even in the early days, I did not usually laugh with him. Steve understands my obscure references---most of the time---and finds the same things funny, even when others would find them inappropriate. We laugh at the same movies. We enjoy many of the same activities.
Back when we just started being a public couple, I remember going to a crowded "hang out" bar with Steve. There were no seats at the bar and people were standing around. Steve and I started talking to different people. I just remember looking over at Steve and sharing a glance like the one Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy shared when Lizzy was helping Darcy's sister play the piano. Well, like the glance Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle shared in the BBC version. And I remember my heart catching. It's the kind of thing you see happening in John Hughes movies. Except that we were older than some of the parents in John Hughes movies and it was happening to me for the first time ever. It's a combination of excitement/attraction and comfort/happiness. And if you have never had that kind of romantic relationship, it's incredibly powerful when it hits in your middle years. What made it even better was the post-mortem: when we discussed it after leaving the bar, it was clear that we really had both been feeling the same thing.
We usually understand each other so well in conversation that it is rather jarring when one of us doesn't get the other's reference. Recently, I said something about The Honeymooners and Steve didn't know what The Honeymooners was. I was shocked, until I realized that he'd grown up in England, and even though they broadcast a lot of American TV, evidently Ralph Kramden was not part of the English cultural landscape. This is a far cry from the way things are with other people. I've just gotten used to having to explain everything I say. I remember times when I was married to Mark when what I was saying required so much explanation that the joke was dead before was understood.
In my life, I've had only a couple of people who understand me like that. One is Jenna, who is one of the all-time funniest people I know, and who gets all my references and laughs at my jokes. The other was my friend Terry, who died a few years ago. So I am actually quite lucky, because to have three people in your life who understand you and want the best for you is probably more than most people have. To have one of them want to live with you and share your bed means you are blessed indeed.
Back when we just started being a public couple, I remember going to a crowded "hang out" bar with Steve. There were no seats at the bar and people were standing around. Steve and I started talking to different people. I just remember looking over at Steve and sharing a glance like the one Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy shared when Lizzy was helping Darcy's sister play the piano. Well, like the glance Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle shared in the BBC version. And I remember my heart catching. It's the kind of thing you see happening in John Hughes movies. Except that we were older than some of the parents in John Hughes movies and it was happening to me for the first time ever. It's a combination of excitement/attraction and comfort/happiness. And if you have never had that kind of romantic relationship, it's incredibly powerful when it hits in your middle years. What made it even better was the post-mortem: when we discussed it after leaving the bar, it was clear that we really had both been feeling the same thing.
We usually understand each other so well in conversation that it is rather jarring when one of us doesn't get the other's reference. Recently, I said something about The Honeymooners and Steve didn't know what The Honeymooners was. I was shocked, until I realized that he'd grown up in England, and even though they broadcast a lot of American TV, evidently Ralph Kramden was not part of the English cultural landscape. This is a far cry from the way things are with other people. I've just gotten used to having to explain everything I say. I remember times when I was married to Mark when what I was saying required so much explanation that the joke was dead before was understood.
In my life, I've had only a couple of people who understand me like that. One is Jenna, who is one of the all-time funniest people I know, and who gets all my references and laughs at my jokes. The other was my friend Terry, who died a few years ago. So I am actually quite lucky, because to have three people in your life who understand you and want the best for you is probably more than most people have. To have one of them want to live with you and share your bed means you are blessed indeed.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Homecoming
Steve came home from his business trip today :) He took the red-eye and slid into bed next to me at about 7 this morning. He's sleeping as I write this. So I changed the settings on this blog so that I could write about---sex. I'm not sure what Google considers adult content, but I figured this way I wouldn't have to worry.
Tom spent the night at his dad's, so when Steve slid into bed this morning, there were no constraints. I'd already awakened and taken off my rather utilitarian nightshirt (I am not a sexy negligee kind of person, and even if I wore one, I couldn't sleep in it---plain cotton Land's End nightshirt is more my style). I was in that sort of half-dozing state, where you hear things but don't open your eyes, when Steve came into the room. I could hear him disrobing behind me, and then he slid into bed and all was right with the world. I felt his naked body move in behind mine and we spooned. I positioned myself closer to him and he said what he always does---"I hope you don't mind if I..." and hugged me close. I said some version of what I always say, "You know I don't mind; I love this."
We slept for a while in each other's arms (well, actually, I was in his arms since that's the way we were facing). I know there are a lot of people in their thirties and younger who think that sexual passion is for the young, but let me tell you, there is nothing better than resuming the sexual part of your life after a long drought. I've told you Steve was the love of my life, but I haven't talked about why. Well, there are a lot of reasons, but sexual attraction is certainly one of them. I see his naked body and I am Pavlov's dog: things start tingling. He is a wonderful lover. There is nothing as good as knowing that this person who excites you more than anyone ever has feels the same way about you. And the closeness, the spooning, just makes me feel like this is home, this is where I'm meant to be. All my doubts and feelings of guilt evaporate when I am in his arms.
What happened next is what always happens. We scootched up as close as possible to one another, my sizable ass pushed into his midsection, and I could feel something start to grow behind me. I turned to face him and---well, just because this is now an adult blog doesn't mean I'm going to share everything. But, as usual, it was wonderful. I love the ferocious look he gets and the way he can't hold back any longer, and I like that I know that when he's finished, he will say, "Sorry, I couldn't help it." And I love afterwards, lying in his arms again and feeling so close. I think that even in our sex-crazed society, we underestimate how important sex is in a relationship. Sharing all those endorphins, knowing that, for those brief minutes, no one can hide or fake anything, makes you incredibly close. It also makes all the doubts you were feeling and the trivial annoyances of living together go away, even though, of course, they'll come back.
Steve fell sound asleep with me in his arms afterwards, and after luxuriating in the feeling for a while, I sidled out of his arms without waking him, stared at his beautiful face and felt my heart swell, and then quietly showered and changed. I tiptoed down the stairs, leaving him to catch up on his sleep for a while, and decided to write about this while it was fresh in my mind, and while all was still right with the world.
Tom spent the night at his dad's, so when Steve slid into bed this morning, there were no constraints. I'd already awakened and taken off my rather utilitarian nightshirt (I am not a sexy negligee kind of person, and even if I wore one, I couldn't sleep in it---plain cotton Land's End nightshirt is more my style). I was in that sort of half-dozing state, where you hear things but don't open your eyes, when Steve came into the room. I could hear him disrobing behind me, and then he slid into bed and all was right with the world. I felt his naked body move in behind mine and we spooned. I positioned myself closer to him and he said what he always does---"I hope you don't mind if I..." and hugged me close. I said some version of what I always say, "You know I don't mind; I love this."
We slept for a while in each other's arms (well, actually, I was in his arms since that's the way we were facing). I know there are a lot of people in their thirties and younger who think that sexual passion is for the young, but let me tell you, there is nothing better than resuming the sexual part of your life after a long drought. I've told you Steve was the love of my life, but I haven't talked about why. Well, there are a lot of reasons, but sexual attraction is certainly one of them. I see his naked body and I am Pavlov's dog: things start tingling. He is a wonderful lover. There is nothing as good as knowing that this person who excites you more than anyone ever has feels the same way about you. And the closeness, the spooning, just makes me feel like this is home, this is where I'm meant to be. All my doubts and feelings of guilt evaporate when I am in his arms.
What happened next is what always happens. We scootched up as close as possible to one another, my sizable ass pushed into his midsection, and I could feel something start to grow behind me. I turned to face him and---well, just because this is now an adult blog doesn't mean I'm going to share everything. But, as usual, it was wonderful. I love the ferocious look he gets and the way he can't hold back any longer, and I like that I know that when he's finished, he will say, "Sorry, I couldn't help it." And I love afterwards, lying in his arms again and feeling so close. I think that even in our sex-crazed society, we underestimate how important sex is in a relationship. Sharing all those endorphins, knowing that, for those brief minutes, no one can hide or fake anything, makes you incredibly close. It also makes all the doubts you were feeling and the trivial annoyances of living together go away, even though, of course, they'll come back.
Steve fell sound asleep with me in his arms afterwards, and after luxuriating in the feeling for a while, I sidled out of his arms without waking him, stared at his beautiful face and felt my heart swell, and then quietly showered and changed. I tiptoed down the stairs, leaving him to catch up on his sleep for a while, and decided to write about this while it was fresh in my mind, and while all was still right with the world.
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