November, Day 7

Today I am thankful that I could spend a perfectly ordinary Sunday with my husband at the hardware store looking at refrigerators, stoves and garbage disposals. We need to replace a broken disposal, and are looking at the other two because ours are 12+ years old and are starting to make goofy noises, and seeing as both of them have had work put into them, it may or may not be worth it for yet another service call.

This may sound perfectly ordinary, and why would one be thankful for that?

You see, I spent the last few years avoiding pretty much everything, including my husband. It was not a truly conscious decision, but for whatever reason and how ever it was (not) working, I avoided him. Today, as we were walking through the aisle with the drapery hardware, I realized how absolutely boring the hardware store was, but how, for us, it was a semi-monumental kind of day. We talked about appliances, and while they may be boring, we were actually talking about our home and our future, honestly and fully present in the conversation. If we would have tried to do this at this time last year, I would have pushed it to the side and ran and picked up the kids (they had a sleepover at the MB's last night) and spent the day fussing over them and avoiding and ignoring my husband.

This is some of the "what we're working on" I have alluded to in a previous post.

I told my husband how much I did realize how much I actually missed living my life, and apologized once again for it. He said it was okay, and that we were making it through. And while I know that, it still was not fair to him, the kids or myself.

So for some of you, actually, probably most of you, the perfectly ordinary may go unnoticed, but for me, today, it was monumental. And it was good.