earth and sky

I’ve decided to relocate my blog for a variety of reasons.  If someone out there reads this, the new address is:

http://earthmeetssky.wordpress.com/

See you there!

We found out this weekend that the airline J wants to work for is no longer hiring.  It’s not exactly a surpise, but it’s frustrating none the less, particularly since I feel like a lot of what we want in life and our relationship would be made possible and significantly easier if he got a job there.  Not that things are not possible if he doesn’t, but it feels a lot less doable if we remove that from the equation, and a lot of that extra work would be on my shoulders.

Damn recession.  I remind myself daily, however, to be grateful I have a secure, well-paying job, and J also has a job where he can fly and (until he gets downgraded) get the hours he needs.  Still, I’m a planner and hate it when my dreams get disrupted.  C’est la vie.

I’m so proud of J.  He decided a while ago that the current airline he is with isn’t a good fit for him long-term and he then searched and found an airline he would like to work for, possibly for life.  It fits both our long-term wishes despite some drastic changes that we would have to make short-term (myself in particular), but after discussing it for a few weeks I gave the green light for J to apply.  J’s trouble, however, is that he hates to write.  His writing is quite good when he does make the effort to, but it takes something just short of drawing and quartering him while poking him with hot irons to get anything written down.  Thus it has taken him five or six months to write one short paragraph for his application, but it’s finally done!  I’m so happy.  The application and resume will be sent in next week, after he has a chance to talk to my dad once more about the airline at Thanksgiving.  The process can be quite long, but hopefully this time next year I can say J is on his way to getting hired, or even awaiting a class date!

Oh, the agony of waiting. One large benefit for me is that it would solve my dilemma of children vs career and making our schedules work.  I would have to quit my current job for J to take his because we would have to move outside the US, but the pay would be enough to allow me both my dream of traveling and pursuing photography, as well as affording a kid or two.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I cannot wait until a week from Friday - I may finally be able to buy my camera!  My last camera has been dead for nearly a year now and I’ve been saving money for other things.  I’m hoping I can find it on mega-sale on black Friday and it will justify me spending money on it.  Regardless, I want to have it by the wedding so I can take awesome pictures during our honeymoon!  I wish I could afford my dream camera, but it would have to be on sale way more than is reasonable to have a chance of that.  Oh well, they call it a wish list for a reason, right?  If I could actually get the thing it’d be a shopping list.

The weekend is finally here.  I hope to get J to see the new James Bond movie with me, though he has protested that it costs money - which it will but I don’t care because I want to go on a date.  It’s been a while since our last and I want to feel young and foolishly in love with a movie date.

I’ve decided to not do my workout today.  Somewhat guilty, but it’s Friday and I want to relax.  I can make it up Sunday instead, or even tomorrow since J works Saturdays until he switches to nights and downgrades planes.  It sounds like the switch won’t happen until  December at the earliest, hopefully after Christmas, so he can get a few more weeks worth of time in the plane he actually needs hours in.

Here’s wishing I had some extra money to throw at a fun date to the new casino that opened nearby.  If only I had put my foot down and insisted that we elope or get married in Italy (our honeymoon location) with just parents and/or immediate family who wanted to fly out.  Compromise is expensive, but hopefully J will be happy with the “real wedding.”  I just wish that I wasn’t stuck with doing most of the work to make it happen…

Feel free to not read this if you hate ranting or whining.  It’s my blog and I want to, and I hope it will help me to get it off my chest in a new and exciting way, since talking with J hasn’t helped.  Feel free to post support or suggestions, but please don’t tell me to quit my whining.  I know it’s bad form to whine, and things in life can always be worse, but frankly, I need to bitch.

I have baby fever.  It’s horrible I know.  I was never one of those people that always knew they wanted a kid growing up, or even as an adult, even in my previous marriage.  J changed that and brought out maternal things in me that I didn’t know I had.  I’ve known for a while that I want to have a baby or two with him at some point.  Just lately, I’ve got the fever - BAD.

Common sense and reasoning doesn’t seem to work on It.  We would be fine financially, though we are still renting at the moment.  We’d like to own our own place and some land, but it’s not a huge deal to us if it happens before or after children.  However, we both work, and J being a pilot his schedule is whacked and not flexible.  Mine is flexible when I’m in the office, which is often, but I *am* field staff, and therefore can be scheduled for fieldwork whenever and wherever, including overnights Monday through Friday, and when that occurs it’s not flexible.  Therefore, it would be extremely difficult at times to deal with childcare, and with J’s current schedule I would be the one responsible for dropping off/picking up every day since he leaves so early and comes back so late.

J’s schedule *is* changing to be a night shift, but as we are going to be seeing each other maybe an hour a day that’s a less than ideal situation to be bringing in the added stress and responsibility of a baby. It’ll be stressful enough trying to keep our relationship close when we are on completely opposite work and sleep cycles.

I make nearly double what J pulls in, and while we could live on my income alone if we were frugal, no way in hell could we live where we do and have both cars on J’s income alone.  Being a pilot and a man, it doesn’t even occur to him that if/when we have kids, he could be a/the stay at home parent.  He doesn’t like his current job but also refuses to not fly. I could go on a feministic rant about this topic alone but I’m going to try to avoid it.

I would *consider* not working for a while to take care of children, however I think that given the way I was raised I would have serious self-worth and self-esteem issues if I was a full time stay at home mom.  (This is not a slam against full-time moms, I respect them enormously; it is in fact pointing out one of the many flaws of my upbringing that unfortunately I have yet to overcome.)  But, that’s not even remotely an option right now given our drastically different incomes, and even if it were I’m not sure I trust any pilot job to be stable and reliable enough to rely my entire family’s well-being on it.

So, logically, now is really not the time to be adding a baby human to our family.  Not even to mention that we’re to have our wedding/honeymoon next May and that’s going to cost us a bit despite our attempts at frugality and parents pitching in some pennies of their own.  Hormones don’t listen to logic though (which is what I’m placing the blame firmly on by the way, effing hormones!), and they’re making my life hell.  I’ve had a horrible tendency towards tears when I think about my/our future and all the uncertainty, and if we’ll ever be able to both get what we want (him to fly, me to have a satisfying career, and we both want a family).

Past few days I’ve had my ass plunked firmly in the pessimistic corner, feeling as though our entire lives are dictated by J’s career and getting all that he wants, and what I want is expendible or I have to pick and choose.  I still feel that way right now, but I’m giving myself until tomorrow morning to get over it.  We’ll see how that goes.  I may try writing him a letter, as talking to him about it hasn’t been very useful for either of us.

The life of a pilots’ partner is one of sacrifice.  If only I could feel that our pilots sacrifice was equal to ours, then I might feel better; but frankly, I don’t see how it is.  I hate when things aren’t fair.

/rant off

Now I got that out, it’s time to fricking grow some tits and be woman!

Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’ve always been horrible about keeping up with journals and such.  A lot has happened.  J and I got engaged in May, and are planning our wedding for May 2009.  We’re trying to keep it small and cheap (hahahaha!) but these things have a life of their own.  Luckily our parents are going to help out, and the venue we picked is small so we can’t invite everyone and have a good excuse for why we’re not.

J is still  freight doggin-it, but we found out this week that he will be downgraded to a different plane.  Therefore he no longer gets the hours he needs to move on, he will be working nights, and he loses a lot of the raise he just got for second-year pay on his current plane.  Sometimes I really hate airlines.  Maybe that’s most of the time? hmph.

It will be hard to plan a wedding and keep a good relationship when we are working opposite schedules.  When I work in the office I can generally work flexible hours, but I seriously doubt that working 5pm to 1am will fly (har har).  I usually get home around 3 to 4pm, but J will likely have to report to work by 5pm, leaving us maybe an hour in the afternoon to see each other while he’s preparing to go to work.

On the upside I will be able to eat what I want for dinner more often, but on the down side J will not be home for dinner to convince me to eat vegetables.

I’m trying not to let it get me down.  We’ve had a good run of luck lately and it’s inevitable that it would not last.  J has his eyes on a passenger airline that he (usually) believes is where he would like to go next, and possibly for the rest of his career, but with all the crap in the airline industry right now they, of course, are not hiring for the moment.  J estimates it will take about 2 years to get through the hiring process and (hopefully) get hired.  The very big upside for me is that I could choose not to work, we could finally get working on expanding our little two-person one-hamster family, and we would have to locate to another place for a while, but in the end we could move to where I want to live and J can still work.  I’m extremely loyal and in love with where we live and we both grew up, however it’s gotten so crowded with everyone moving here and overdevelopment I’ve long since decided I want to move to Vancouver, B.C. because it’s like Seattle only less sprawl and more snow.

We shall see.  For now we have to survive working opposite shifts at work for indefinitely.  I hate airlines.

Things have been chugging right along lately, and I’ve not had much time or energy to write.  J continues his freight job, and I’m continuing my geology job and being more busy than usual with field work the past month or so, which is good.  We got two dwarf hamster sisters in February (well, he got them for me for valentines day, but they’re “our” hammies now), and they’ve been a delight to us both. They’ve been good for my mental well being as well, I grew up with a ton of pets and animals. Having had none for years and with J being gone a good portion of the time I was pretty lonely. They sleep most of the day but it’s made me feel noticeably better just to have a companion/presence when I get home and to be needed in a small way.  I know J needs me but it’s not always easy to tell, and pilots being so independent and apart much of the time, it’s hard to feel like you’re needed by them sometimes.

I spent the past three days across the state for work - I generally don’t have to travel a whole heck of a lot, and rarely overnight, but this time I did.  I was suprisingly homesick the first day, which was unexpected.  I slept poorly the previous night because I was near-puking from an upset stomach, so I blame the tiredness and the subsequent workday. I think it was kind of good for him to have *me* away for a few days for *my* work, though.  He missed having me around when he got home, since he’s usually the one that has to go on trips for work.  It can be good for a pilot to be the one left at home while the other person gets called away for a trip once and a while, I think.

Well J is off on the other side of the state 24-hours a day again until Friday afternoon, covering for the guy who usually does it while he’s on vacation. So the place is mine for a while, and I’m determined to be optimistic about it.

I’ve been looking at getting a pet, I grew up with a ton of animals and I haven’t had one in ages. With J working such long days I have a hefty amount of time on my hands alone after work and all day Saturday (even without him covering some other non-commutable run for a week!) and it gets lonely. I haven’t really settled on what, though; I love dogs, am allergic to cats, I like rodents (but not guinea pigs), and it goes on. I would like something that would both be suitable for our current apartment (fairly big, but it’s still an apartment) and a companion-type pet. But I’m worried about bringing in a pet that would need a lot of attention, and would get potentially get confused or unhappy about our changing situations (J gone/home and what is/isnt’ acceptable, etc). I’m undecided about what to do. It’d definitely be cheaper continuing without one, but I think it’d help me mentally/emotionally a lot to have one.

The holidays are finally over, and J is going to finally be back to his normal schedule and home every day, again.  Yay!  On the downside, I have to go to work regularly again (boo!).  It’s so tough going back after a lot of time off, and there’s not a whole lot going on right now, so it’s even more so!

J and I had a good talk yesterday and I feel a lot better about several things that have bothered me off and on for a while now.  I need to go to the doctor, though, I’ve been putting it off for a loooong time.  We talked for the first time in a long time about having children, and marriage, and I think we’re finally starting to understand each other and that we don’t disagree at all.  There’s been a lot of confusion, and he doesn’t like to communicate much, so it’s been a hard road to navigate.  I think I got the point across to him that I’m not a mind-reader though, and hopefully it’ll be smoother sailing.

That being said, because we are starting to realize we agree on the children-issue, I need to see a ob-gyn about several probelms I’ve had for a while.  I’ve always been very irregular and it’s something I’ve just dealt with.  Changing what pills I take never really affected it, and I pretty much just sighed and dealt.  About a year ago I started having hot flashes and I got even more irregular than before, sometimes going up to 3 or 4 months with nothing, sometimes 3 in one month!  I went to a gyn to see if she could figure out what was wrong, but she was young, and although she had me get a ultrasound done to see if there were any tumors or cysts in my uterus, she was pretty unhelpful.  It was VERY expensive, too, and I got discouraged after that.  Since the last J had talked it didn’t sound like he was that into having kids, I let myself ignore it until now.  He’s been on me to see someone about it for a few months, and I should stop putting it off, particularly since we’ve both realized that the other does want to have a family after all, despite all our misunderstandings and whatnot.

Gotta love communication.  I wish I *was* a mindreader, he’s so hard to figure out sometimes.  I know he sometimes feels the same way about me, though, even though I think I’m pretty easy to figure out since I don’t generally keep how I feel about things to myself.  Oh well.  That’s what makes it interesting, I suppose.

I feel awful. It’s been about three weeks this schedule of J’s has been going on, and it’s worn me down so much. He isn’t very good at communicating while he’s away, and it makes it even worse. I feel unloved, though he says he loves me and I generally feel loved when he’s here with me and can show me. I don’t get why he can’t show it while he’s away. He just turns off. Most of the time he gives the impression that he’d rather not be talking to me, he’ll barely say anything and most conversation ends quick after I give up trying to get him started on topics. He says he just has nothing to talk about. I don’t always either, but I’m putting all my energy into supporting him in his job even though it takes him away from me all day for a week at a time, and it seems like he doesn’t even care or notice. He says he does, but how can I tell if he won’t say anything or show me any support back?

I told him last night how I felt about this and some other things, I thought maybe he understood. He made an effort to talk more today, but that’s not really the point. The point I tried to (repeatedly) get across to him was that I felt like he didn’t have any interest in me because he doesn’t show that he cares about how I feel or the things I do to make his/our life better, or sacrifice so he can have the career he wants. I put out all the support I can and it feels like he doesn’t give me anything back. He doesn’t seem to want to make the effort, so it tells me that I’m not worth it to him, which in turn I conclude he’s not interested in being with me.

He says I’m wrong. I think he tried to talk to me more today as a way of showing he was interested in me. I’m trying to appreciate the effort and not feel upset by him missing the point completely and just addressing a sign. I want to feel loved, I want to feel missed, I want to feel like someone is happy to see me when he comes home, and thinks I’m beautiful when I try to make myself pretty for him and doesn’t talk about me like a chore. I give him the support and freedom he wants, I just want some back, and he can’t seem to do it. I thought he understood, I guess he didn’t really, or again doesn’t know how so does nothing. It’s happened countless times before.

I don’t know what to do anymore, I’ve spiralled so low it’s hard to even get up in the morning to go to work, and I’ve gotten sick with a cold on top of it. The worst part is I don’t even have any close friends I can share with or cry with or even get advice from, or to ask if I’m really being unreasonable or if I’m justified or what.

I’m sick of crying, I wish I could just stop.