Hey Pam and PIB,

Thanks for the visits, girls!!

Rest of the weekend was great. We stayed in Sat. night and watched a movie. Sunday we went hiking again and then h did homework for a while while I did the food shopping and cooked (Curried Lentil soup for the crockpot!). We put some more curtains up, too. It was great to work together on making the house look good.

We had a VERY interesting talk while we were hiking. A nice little breakthru, actually, and it's rejuvenated me quite a bit. I think I may even ressurect my KLA thread (that's where I've been working on my "goals").

So...topic was our house. h has expressed some strong feelings of late about wanting to move. We have an old (!!!) house that is wonderful in many ways but is also lacking in many ways. We could spend big $ to update it to address its shortcomings but in recent months 1 commercial developer has bought a large lot near us and started building on it and a second is on its way...our street is a cut thru street so we've seen the traffic on our sleepy little street go up astronomically. It's unlikely to improve and will probably get worse...

The house (or selling it, to be exact) has always been a sore spot for me...I think it just comes down to wanting to feel grounded...feeling afraid that without that security, well, all hell would break loose. I've loosened that grip quite a bit over the last few years though it remains an internal struggle sometimes. Simply put, the house respresents security in my warped mind...and the thoughts of getting rid of it scare me at times...plus, it has $ issues wrapped up in it, too...until h gets out of law school we won't have an increase in our income AND I had actually been hoping to downsize my job a bit...

Well..I have been working very hard on being less reactive about it -- partly because I've realized that it's a house -- not some magic bullet that saves me from all turmoil , partly because when the bomb dropped I HAD to accept that we might get D and I wouldn't be able to stay there, and partly because it's GOOD for me to shake myself up every so often...

anyway, we talked a bit about it yesterday...it started out as a tough conversation...we were trying to establish what our individual stances were...what our relative time frame was, etc. It turns out that we're on the same page about what features we like/don't like and we agreed to target the Spring time frame to move if possible.

I did step on h's toes at one point...I was trying to articulate that I didn't want to rush into this headlong...that I thought the house needed work before we could easily sell it...that I wanted to plan a few months as opposed to just throwing it on the market. he took that personally and said "yah, I know that. You're making it sound like I'm panicking and want to do this today. I never panic."

well...it was a good thing I was walking in front of him so he couldn't see my face which would have (unforgivingly? meanly? quizzically?) have been transmitting "oh? what about 2 years ago, almost to the DAY, when you told me you were quitting your job and did so the next day?" Of course the "panic" then was ow related...

anyway, I made some validating response but h clearly got it because in a few minutes he said .... "look....the house is completely distinct from us...there's no ultimatum here...or suggestion that we have to move or I'll leave you forever...we're just working on this together".

Point being, I suppose, that he wasn't gonna drop some mini-house-related bomb on me.

He told me that he felt a thousand times better because we have "a plan".

THEN he told me that he thought these kinds of conversations were difficult for us. I asked what he thought would make them better and he said "well, it seems like we both come in with assumptions about what the other person wants or thinks. I think it just makes sense for us to say 'this is what I'm assuming. is that true?'" Wise man, my h...

I offered up the notion that I sometimes can't HEAR what's actually important or a priority to him because it gets intermingled with the rest of the conversation. I think he got that.

'twas very nice to have a conversation with my h about how to improve our communication. GOOD STUFF!!!

School starts today...yikes!

Sage

Relax. Appreciate. Be calm. Laugh. Enjoy. Be secure. Be loving. Be loved. Don't personalize. Don't ASSume. Accept. Be grateful.