Well, here I am back in Boston. It was 34 in Portland and it’s 28 here but it feels so much colder. Maybe it’s this drafty old house, I dunno.

My trip to Portland was good. I visited a few schools for the tour job with a couple promising conversations. After years in sales, though, we’ll just talk about it when there’s something to talk about! lol. The weather was great, waiting to snow until after I left. It was great to see everyone and to see Stella – though she really doesn’t do much yet – pretty standard for a five-month-old. My goal was that she not scream when she saw me or when I held her and she did not. She grabbed my finger and stared at me a lot. She has a beautiful smile and likes to have her feet tickled. She’s perfect!

The main reason I went home – oh, besides my license which I now have (I exist! I exist! lol) – was of course to see Mike. Four and a half months is a long time. I think both of us wanted a “perfect” week, and it is safe to say that we didn’t have one. lol. But it’s not a bad thing. He and I are very strong-willed, strong-minded, fiercely independent people who do not like answering to anyone else – and frankly we’re not used to it since both  of us have been divorced for a very long time. On top of that, we’ve spent the last few months trying to be supportive of each other – which means that we hadn’t had a knock-down, drag out since a few weeks before I left.

We fought more than I think either of us would have liked this weekend (at least I hope he didn’t like fighting that much, lol), but based on his past marriage and mine – where they never fought (and never really talked about anything that needed to be talked about) and where David and I bickered all of the time without any resolution to anything often escalating into screaming matches with no resolution to anything and the same offenses being committed over and over again (mostly on his part but also on mine – I’m no innocent), I’m glad that Mike and I fight the way we do.

I know it sounds weird but when something bothers one of us, if talking doesn’t work – things get heated, we fight (we’re both very good fighters which isn’t always pretty) but then we figure out what the hell we’re fighting about, calm down, talk about it and it’s done. Sometimes this takes a few minutes, sometimes a lot longer and maybe he’s done talking about it before I am or vice versa, but eventuallly we reach the finish line and something has actually been accomplished. The best part is that it doesn’t ruin the rest of the day or night or whatever because once it’s done, it’s done, and within five minutes we’re laughing and joking again and it’s actually genuine – nobody’s putting on a front for anyone else.

I look at the relationships that I have been exposed to in my life – what appears to make them work, or what appeared to contribute to their failure. I look at people I know who got married so young that they didn’t really know what they were in for and are still married nearly 20 years later. I look at people who met and got married quickly and, again, years later – happily married. Relationships that started out without a chance in hell – still married. People who do everything by the book – at least in my experience – not so much married anymore.

I think the common thread in the successful ones is that they have consciously agreed to be partners. Not bf/gf, husband/wife, whatever – partners – going forward knowing it’s not going to be easy, knowing there’s a really good chance that it won’t work out without some hard work, and knowing how to pick your battles – knowing that every solid relationship has to have balance in compromise or it’ll capsize.

Mike and I had a few rounds this weekend that were hard to find balance – we both stopped, figured out what was wrong, talked about it, acknowledged each other’s feelings on the subject, found our common ground, and let it go. I’m very proud of us as we’re both so damned stubborn that it shouldn’t work like that, but I think we get that critical point – without being able to compromise and work through the bullshit, we may as well just walk away now. I think we learned a lot more about each other in the last six days than we did in a six week period of time before.

So, after all is said and done, we actually had a great weekend. We worked through a lot of things that have been frustrating both of us for the past few months and we cemented our future plans…

A couple months ago we were having – not really an argument – but a very difficult conversation. He told me he really doesn’t want to move here (he has many valid reasons- the most important of which is that his daughter is now back in Oregon). I told him that I didn’t want to move back. I asked him if that meant we should break up and he said no and then we were like “ooooooooooh kay, how do we do this, then?” The conversation that night ended without a resolution to anything – I hate when that happens, but it left me thinking about how the hell we were going to do this. Then I remembered that relationships are about compromise. When I made plans to move out here our relationship wasn’t even a “relationship” – though I cared about him, he wasn’t really a factor in any plans I made. By the time I moved here, we were in a relationship but this move had been part of the package as we moved forward – so while he was a factor in my decision, I had his full support in moving and we were going to part friends. Now, four and a half months after we’ve decided that we do love each other and we do want to be together – and that he ain’t movin’ to Boston and I ain’t movin’ back to Portland.

I had a list of cities in which I would live. Boston was number one, Vancouver B.C. was number two (and would probably be Mike’s first choice – but moving internationally right now isn’t a very good idea, nor is it easy to do) – San Francisco (or the greater bay area) was number three. So the next day I told him I wanted to run something by him – and I could tell he was ready to say no to whatever my suggestion was. I asked him how San Francisco sounded – and he stopped and said “Oh… oh, I can do San Francisco.” And then he promised me that I will not die in an earthquake.

So, this summer, I will be packing up the kids and heading west – again. Aside from SF being someplace we can both agree on and aside from it being within driving distance of home (his ex can meet us half way with his daughter and it will just make life so much easier) – the days are a little longer which will help us both with some seasonal issues, and it is my favorite temperature all year long – 65 and foggy. I don’t dislike cold – it really doesn’t bother me most of the time as even when it snows it’s still pretty dry out here. But I had no idea until I moved here that I have an arthritic knee! I feel like an old woman! If I sit for any length of time, my left knee gets so stiff that I hobble for a few minutes before I can walk normally. I’m only 34! lol. I can still walk for miles no problem, but God forbid I sit for five minutes cuz I’ll be dyin’ when I try to un-sit. This week in Oregon was great because I had no arthritis pain whatsoever.

Anyway, it is just about as expensive to live there as here, but even though I would love to live in SF  proper, I really have no problems living anywhere within the greater bay area – though I’d prefer not to live in Oakland and the closer to the water the better. But housing costs are the killer, so neither of us have our hearts set on a SF address. Both of us have transferable jobs – there are NAPAs everywhere and there are colleges everywhere. His job is one of those made more secure by recession because when people stop buying new cars – they fix their old ones! With sixteen years working for the same company – it’s just a matter of finding one with room for him. And, though slow, moving in June/July works really well with the academic year so I can be working in both places at once and it should work out pretty well. Law school is still on the agenda for me – and for him, he goes back and forth on opening a restaurant, but I think it’s still very much something he’d like to do someday. So plans haven’t changed – they’ve just moved.

In the meantime I’m going to soak up as much Boston as humanly possible and get to enjoy a New England spring and early summer – then in a few months, we’ll both finally get a real fresh start (that isn’t a false start). We get to start laying down some roots and build a future. Believe me, there was absolutely no fighting about any of that! :-)

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