Last month, in the middle of hurt and frustration and desperation, I wrote about my backup plans. You all were incredibly supportive (thank you).

Many people, though, perceived my backup plans as a bad thing. I get it. To know where you’d go, what you’d do, how you’d start over if your marriage ended is certainly not a fun thing to talk about (or think about).

But I found that having a backup plan soothed me and reminded me that being married is an active choice.

There is a bright side to thinking about a backup plan: I know I’d rather be here, even while fighting and feuding and frustrating. Really. The relief I felt once I put my backup plan together wasn’t about how much I wanted to be free of my marriage, but rather how free I felt when I remembered I had a choice. I could stay and fight or I could leave and fight, but I was not out of options.

I’m never out of options.

Every morning, I wake up and choose to live this life in this house in this city and this job with this man and these darned animals. If I didn’t want to, I could do something different. I could decide to sell the house, move to another city, have more or fewer animals or leave my husband. I could change my priorities, my outlook, or my goals, all of which would change my path. I may whine about living in this city or working from home or how somecat is harassing somedog incessantly, but let’s not forget that I’m the adult (human) in this situation and I have choices.

I may wish for perfection, but I live in the reality of my choosing.

Now, before someone points this out, you can’t choose to be healthy if you’re not, and being lucky enough to be healthy, I don’t want to deign to talk about choices, but you can certainly find stories of strong people making active choices even while aching.

No, you can’t conjure a better job, better mate, or better life. But if you decide you want a better job, it’s clear what you need to do next, right? Brush up your resume, apply, apply, apply, reach out to your networks. I’m not saying anything’s easy, only that choices exist.

Okay, enough soapbox. Back to narcissism, ironically the best way to keep the snarky comments at bay.

After a really shitty August, I chose a better perspective in September, and it has been a rousing success. My marriage is better, my work is better, my house is cleaner. Rather than dwell on the angst, I picked out the best parts of my life and focused on those. I have a great life, am doing my best to be a great wife, love a fantastically human man, and am surrounded by animals and woodsy life that force me to live the way I should.

One of our dogs started pooping in the house. The aptly nicknamed Mr. Poopinsky would come in from the backyard and leave a little turd in the living room. ARGH. After a week of this, I remembered, hey, I’m the human, the one with opposable thumbs to open the front door and the treat jar and the ability to read that book on training! Also, hi, I’m the empathetic and patient one most likely to have success being the trainer! (Well, except for Frank the cat who has been wildly successful at teaching humans to give him milk when near the fridge and make room on their laps for him to sleep.)

So every morning and every afternoon, I take each dog out to the wooded side yard to do their business, and when they do, they get a treat. And WOW, I’d completely forgotten how fabulous our side yard can be. Just steps from the house (like, three), it’s quiet and calm and shaded and cool, except for the frantic buzzing of bugs and rustling of leaves and sparkling sunlight on the dewy grass. I am, quite literally, a homebody, and if I didn’t have to take the dogs out one at a time to make sure they don’t leave me stinky gifts, I’d never have gone out there.

That’s the bright side and you can find one in anything if you just try. I had a backup plan that helped me realize I didn’t want to use it. Knowing I didn’t want to use it reminded me that I choose to stay here with this man and be the best wife I can. Thinking about living in a city again made me sad to lose the daily chance to take a twenty step stroll into the woods. Those woods are where I want my kids to explore, finding bugs and learning to avoid poison ivy and conjuring fantastic and imaginative games. Seeing how much I love about my life forced me to see the choice I’d been making to focus on the bad rather than revel in the good. All of that led me to a commitment to look at the bright side for an entire month, and after one month I can say that my life is profoundly better.

One. Month.

It didn’t cost me a dime and I didn’t need anyone’s agreement to try. In removing myself from the negativity spiral, my husband faced his part in it and committed to improving his outlook as well. Those conversations strengthened our ability to converse, and our willingness to find the bright side in the uncomfortable allowed us to be way too broke in order to pay off things way more quickly. Almost two months more quickly than planned, in fact, and with a freaking smile.

Oh, and I learned a few things:

- Protecting myself from disappointment is impossible, so hope is the way to go. I must remember to hope.

- To disperse anger requires action or distraction; being happy takes either. Trust requires inaction. Gratitude requires action.

- Looking at, talking about, celebrating goodness is not bragging. It’s smart.

- Compromising is slow and unsatisfying, but necessary.

- Gross confessions are fun.

- Words matter.

Thanks for joining me, actively or passively, this month. Thanks for rooting me on and showing me how and trying it yourself. I feel connected in a way I’d always wanted but never managed, so thank you.

As part of Blogging the Bright Side, I’m trying to ferret out the habits I have that keep me from being happy, so while this post may not seem to be very chipper, I do have a point.  Really.

We’ll start with a story: my husband spend all weekend doing laundry.  I hate doing laundry and therefore don’t do it, a choice made possible by my work-at-home gig.  I will pick yesterday’s outfit off the floor and wear it again with absolutely no qualms, justifying the practice because I don’t sweat, don’t get dirty, and don’t DO anything.  Really.  I sit at my desk, freezing, typing away.  If my fingers were attired you might make the case that they do enough to warrant a washing, but they don’t.

So I don’t do laundry and Joey, because he does get dirty and has to go out in public daily, does.  Our laundry pile grows to epic and fur-covered proportions and turns into a really big project.  He, being the fantastic man he is, slays it with dedication and aplomb.  Okay, and a bit of whining and bad attitude, but still….

I should be grateful when I see the bins full of clean clothes in our bedroom, and I am, but more overwhelmingly, I dread what will come next, because I KNOW.  I know that he’ll be grumpy that he did all this work and it will soon be for naught (you know, because clean clothes will inevitably get dirty again).  I know that he’ll want gobs and gobs of appreciation, which I feel but can’t ever manage to convey in a way that makes him feel as good as he expects.  I know that we’ll fight because I will look through the clean laundry for my favorite pair of underwear and something will fall off the pile and he’ll be pissed that I’m not giving the clean laundry the respect it (and he) deserves.  I know that he’ll hint and cajole and passive-aggressively imply that he wants me to drop everything on my schedule to fold and put away my clothes rightthisminute… and I’ll ignore and avoid and work from the coffee shop so that I have an excuse (nevermind WORK) to not have that done when he gets home.

I know, oh, ho, I know.

Ridiculously, I AM grateful.  Really.  Looking through the clean clothes to decide what to wear today was fun!  Like shopping!  But free!  I appreciate the effort he put into it especially because I wouldn’t.  I would never, ever, ever spend an entire Sunday trekking to and from the basement to move clothes from the washer to the dryer on regularly and yet totally annoying intervals.

But I can’t manage to convey this effectively, so we fight.  Over a good thing, yes, but a fight nonetheless.

So I did some research and I found this:

Seven Principles for Cultivating Gratitude

By Gregg Krech

1. Gratitude is independent of one’s objective life circumstances;
2. Gratitude is a function of attention;
3. Entitlement makes gratitude impossible;
4. When we continue to receive something on a regular basis, we typically begin to take it for granted;
5. Our deepest sense of gratitude comes through grace — the awareness that we have not earned, nor do we deserve what we have been given;
6. Gratitude can be cultivated through sincere self-reflection; and
7. The expression of gratitude (through words and deeds) has the affect of heightening our personal experience of gratitude.

Nice idea, wrong how-to.  I get the concept of gratitude, it’s recognition of that gratitude where I’m stuck. 

And here’s where my personal and professional lives converge, yet again: I’m about to launch a recognition initiative at work.  But while I can find a myriad of articles on how to do recognition properly at work, all of my searches related to spouses turned up nada (“how to give appreciation” “appreciation spouse” “how to give appreciation spouse”).  Lots of stuff on thanking, not so much on conveying my soulful and committed appreciation for a weekend of laundry – short of taking the morning to put my clothes away.

What do you think I should do (short of taking the morning to put my clothes away, because it offends me that he implies I should do this during my workday, which admittedly isn’t always used for strictly work-related activities but still shouldn’t be used for completely unrelated stuff lest I fail completely at my half-hearted attempts at discipline)?

We talk a lot about trust in relationships in a rainbows and butterflies way.  You know, as if “trusting someone” and “having trust” and “remembering how important trust is” are easy actions.  Actually, we talk about trust as if it’s a natural weightless free and happy state, not an action or series of actions.

But trust is an action and an uncomfortable one at at that.

My husband has a thing for weapons that rivals my thing for furniture.  We’re in the middle of paying off a lot of debt in a very short period of time so money discussions happen frequently (but, I am happy to report, with little argument or drama).  The other day he got a call from a friend during lunch, and because I couldn’t very well turn off my ears, I caught on pretty quickly that this was a great deal on a coveted item.  The call went on for a few minutes, giving me time to think through my response to the whole situation.

First response: Are you kidding me?  We’re two weeks away from our goal and four weeks away from our celebration spending.  Cheater!

Second response: I don’t get to spend that kind of money just because it’s a good deal!  So this means we’re going to find me money to blow now, too?

Third response: Do I want more weapons in the house?  Would I do this?  Will he put the money back in two weeks?  Do I trust him?

And right there, folks, in that last sentence… that right there is the whole point.  Do I trust him?  I want to say, “Yes, of course I trust him.  I married him, right?”  But we’re not talking rainbows and butterflies trust.  We’re talking Trust.  In this case, To Trust Him = To Back Off.  I’m neither his mother nor his accountant and how he spends money we agreed we’d have to blow is not for me to decide.  What was for me to (help) decide was whether it was okay to break our rules and spend it early.

Sometimes, trusting my husband means I have to stay out of the way, keep my mouth shut, support an idea that was not mine, accept that he does things in a way I wouldn’t — let go of the oars.  Trusting, as an action, is an uncomfortable one because it means not doing things, not having control, not being the boss of my life.

Trust, as an action, is a lot of inaction.  And it’s hard.

On the bright side, it has meant that I don’t have to get involved in every little detail or care about every individual thing.  If he wants to call in a plumber, I remember he has the best intentions.  If he thinks we need to have a tree cut down, I don’t bother to research.  If he decides that the landscaping is crap and must be changed, I’m all for it.  Tell me what we’re buying and off we go. 

For a long time I fought him every time he wanted to spend money because his priorities weren’t mine, then I realized that our goals are the same even if our methods aren’t.  Being married is like running a three-legged race: neither as fast nor as easy as running alone, but more fun if you let it be.  And if you fall down, someone else’s body might cushion yours.

I’ll be honest, I first titled this post, “Fun Friday!” then admitted that bill paying is not so fun… but it is fantastic (really)! 

Let’s discuss why my Friday is fantastic:

It started with a boss meeting.  I dread them and look forward to them in equal parts (like nerds “dread” tests… except I secretly liked them, too).  When they go well, I get reassurance of my employment status and direction and usefulness. When they don’t, well, at least I know I’m not fired.  When we skip them, I have another week to worry that I’m about to get canned.  Remember, I work from home in a strategic role for a boss I rarely interact with.  Also, I am a worrier and affirmation addict, so anytime I’m not getting confirmation that I’m doing a good job, I worry that I’m doing a bad job.  A half hour conversation is a big deal. And today it was good, full of work to do and looming deadlines.  {Hi, I’m strange.  I like unhappy customers, ridiculous deadlines, and unrealistic goals.  All at once.  Throw in some people who aren’t convinced and any amount of confusion or chaos and I am one satisfied worker.}

We paid off our last credit card today.  And in two weeks we’ll have paid off all debts except for our cars and mortgage, a grand total of $10,279.26 over 12 weeks.  We’re very proud of ourselves (okay, the pride thing is mostly me, because I was the financial embarrassment when I met my husband and now I’m the Budget Monitor slash Pay Shit Off-er).  I know it’s gauche to talk about money, but whatever, I talk about s.e.x. and fighting and divorce.  This – this focus on getting out of debt and planning where our money is going and being okay with being broke because that means we’ll soon be done with debt – this is worth discussing.  Or at least mentioning.

I’m hanging out with my bff this afternoon… and we’re going to a vintage furniture store.  So, so, so many things right about that sentence.  So many!  We’ll see if my relatively new budgeting prowess can survive the vintage furniture kind of lust.  Let’s not bet on it.

I just realized how brilliant I was when I set my office furniture up this way.  Remember this picture?

I am sitting on that white chair typing on that laptop.  Here’s the awesome part: when I’m thinking or pondering or planning or plotting,* I look up and to the left.  I only noticed this the other night when Joey was sitting to my left while I was writing something, and he kept thinking I was looking at him and trying to figure out WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG THAT SHE KEEPS LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT?  Nope, just thinking.

Well, in this office setup, when I look up and to the left to think, my eyes fall on many beautiful green trees.  I’m on the second floor in this corner of the house so it feels like I’m in a tree house.  The best kind of tree house with internet access and coffee and a bright yellow couch in the corner.  I love all the green around here, and finding myself looking out at the about-to-change leaves is pretty cool.

Now, if only I receive good news re: something secret I applied for, this would be the perfect day.  Assuming, of course, that my husband and I continue to get along fabulously.

How’s your Friday shaping up?

Oops, I forgot: My favorite neighbor baby is turning one soon and I need some really fantastic gift ideas for a one year old.  I’m definitely a classic gift kind of giver (and honestly, I typically only give kids books) but Joey wants to give him “something really awesome and cool.”  Ideas?  I kind of sort of maybe want to DIY something, but then again, I’m not so good at DIY and don’t want to embarrass myself.  We’re shooting for a sub-$50 price range.

*High school AP English vocabulary word I’ll never forget — ruminate: to ponder, plan or plot.

(P.S. Cacey – I have no idea what color the walls are.  Our ex-roommate painted them and I’m fairly certain I used the remaining paint on the floor in the basement then chunked the can.  I can tell you that the wall is a dark, dark navy but depending on the light it reads black or gray.  I love it, too.)

My new office location.  I’ve moved things around since this picture was taken, but I like the library-ish feel of the dark walls.  Please ignore the tape on the wall (never noticed it before!) and awkward lamp placement.

My goofy “I work from home and am always cold” Rainbow Brite attire.  Whoo, boy, that mirror is dusty.

Frank’s silly “I just woke up from a nap ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” face… and this happy yellow couch that I slip-covered just before our wedding.  I wasn’t so into the fabric my husband picked, but he was right: it’s happy.  Contrast is yummy.  The zipper showing on the cushion is not.

Huck (the fluffy gray cat) who just wants to cuddle with anyone, anything, anytime.  Ironically, he was my original Untouchable, not letting me near him for the first couple of years that I had him.

This picture of some dog at the dog park.  Such a soulful stare.

Clouds.  Incidentally, I took a bunch of cloud pics when flying home from Seattle and am debating putting a few of them in frames as a gift for friends who are about to have a baby boy.  Is giving people home decor-ish things presumptuous?

Having already stricken lies and the word “but” from my arsenal, I am further constraining my verbal options by removing the following phrase: “I wish.”

Why?  Because I realized the other day that all of my frustrations with my husband start with that phrase.  “I wish he wasn’t so ___” or “I wish he’d ____” or “I wish he wouldn’t ____.”  Interestingly, though he and my bff share many of the same traits, on her I don’t EVER wish otherwise. On him, I OFTEN wish otherwise.  On her, it’s part of her charm.

Why is that?  It’s like I want my husband to be perfect and anything short of perfection is an opportunity for improvement.  Ridiculous and unfair.  I pride myself on loving every bit of my friends and family (and removing myself from the situation when I’m not feeling so loving) and on seeing the best in people.  Except for with this man I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone.  I think it’s because I don’t remove myself when I’m not feeling so loving, yet another thing I’m working on.

So, I’m going to work really hard to stop myself when I start thinking, “I wish….”  For the time being, until the habit is replaced, I will instead think, “What a dork!” or something equally benign.  And then I will laugh, even if only in my head.

{Last night Joey and the dogs were chasing each other around the living room having fun and I clamped down on the urge to remind them to be careful.  Both dog and man came running into the bedroom looking both excited and guilty.  “Indy just chased me THROUGH the coffee table and knocked books EVERYWHERE and it was so hilarious!”  Dog nods as Man tells the story.  I laughed.  They had so much fun.  Luckily books aren’t breakable!}

I’ve been talking about keeping a gratitude journal for a while and I’ve finally done it. If Oprah and Kasia get somethin’ out of it, then I will try. 

Look up in my header, high above the header-without-a-logo-because-I’m-just-not-that-talented and you’ll see a new link: Gratitude. 

Ta-da!  *jazz hands*

Yes, folks, my new gratitude journal is a blog.  Well, technically, if I ever figure it out, my new gratitude journal will be a subdomain of this blog.

Surely you’re not surprised.  If Gretchen’s #1 commandment is to “Be Gretchen,” then my first commandment is to “Know Marisa.”  Having to rely on a physical journal will give me an excuse not to do this (although I did buy a really nice leather one for $6 at Big Lots).

So, um, there it is.  Three to five quick things I’m grateful for, every day. *jazz hands* (just for grins)

{Thanks to my smart aleck husband, I need to point out that the photo header of Mars is temporary until I can figure out how to replace the darned thing, and should not be taken to mean that “Not Quite Betty Crocker’s Journey” will be, in fact, to Mars.}

I know, I know, you read the title and thought, “Duh.” 

I am, right this very minute, procrastinating.  Having allowed my stomach to churn at the thought of this work thing I have for two weeks (for my peers, who scare and intimidate the bejeezus out of me even now, two years later), I have to get it done today.  MUST.  And it’s one of those projects where I have to produce something, and not just anything, but an actual tool that will miraculously with the wave of a wand (or click of a button) show us our allocations and gaps and projections.  I’m not going to bs my way out of this one with some brilliant new idea.

So what am I doing?  Blogging.  And before that? Getting my Google Reader unread items back to zero.  And before that?  “Researching” by Googling appropriate terms (though I knew I’d never find exactly what I needed).  I have not managed to stay in the appropriate application (blah, Excel) for more than a few minutes.

I know this because I am procrastinating by paying attention to my procrastination!

Are you a procrastinator?  Do you have any good tricks for getting past the ohmygodI’llnevergetthisrightsoImayaswellcatchuponthenews situation?  And yes, I’m well aware that soliciting comments to avoid my procrastination is, in fact, a method of procrastinating.

A couple of years ago I quit lying.  Completely.  No more, “yes, that looks great on you” or “yes, I’m fine” or “it was THIS big.”  Fibs, white lies, exaggerations – all removed from my repertoire.  It was difficult but necessary. 

I highly recommend it.  When you don’t lie, life is much less stressful. 

I fall off the bandwagon periodically, but I’m hyper-aware when I do.  If you watch me closely, you can see the hitch in my breath, the slight pause, the quick glance away when I’ve caught myself fibbing.  My biggest weakness is exaggerating the stories I tell Joey about our animals.

Starting today, I’m going But-Free.  I’m on week three of Blogging the Bright Side and things are going swimmingly, so it’s time for a new challenge.  As I’m wont to do, I noticed how annoying the word “but” is when my husband says it.

Me: “That tree is beautiful!”

Him: “Sure, but it’ll fall on the house if we don’t keep trimming it.”

Me: “Indy is so cute lately.”

Him: “Yea, but he peed in an inappropriate place.” {Note: I have cleaned up his wording in retelling the story.  I consider this an acceptable modification, though you could argue it’s a type of lie.}

I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about trimming the tree or Mr. Pee-body, but tying the negative to a generally positive statement isn’t helping anybody.

So that’s it: no more “but’s” in my life.  I’m going to start by not saying the word, progress to not typing the word, and wrap up by hopefully not thinking the word.  I’m not sure this is possible, but I’m willing to try.  {Is contradicting a negative phrase an acceptable use of the word?  I think using “but” to highlight a contradiction – like in the last sentence of the first paragraph of this post – is okay.  I’ll figure it out as I go.}

‘Fess Up Friday was so much fun!  I was just reading your comments to Joey and I couldn’t help but remark: “These are my people!”  How fun is it to find that other people are just as gross (ahem, QUIRKY) as you are?  So fun!

I’m going to respond to comments here because I always forget to check back on a blog to see if my comment was replied to, and I don’t want you to think that I ignore your comments. I love them!

http://lebendesmarienkafers.blogspot.com/: I worry about being a dog mom constantly.  Constantly.  My latest worry is that I’ve ruined Indiana by turning him into a joyless intense wary dog (kind of like myself, the irony doesn’t escape me).  Also, I feel guilty that I slacked on training once things got sort of under control, so we can live with them day-to-day but they aren’t exactly well-behaved.  And I’m trying really hard to get their leash skills better, but BOY, is it hard.  I hate getting pulled down the street so we don’t go on walks as often as we should.  One of my favorite dog writers (can’t remember which, and to be clear, these are human authors writing about dogs, not actual dog authors) says a dog can’t pull with nothing to pull against, but this whole concept confounds me.  Am I supposed to drop the leash?  How do you not pull against a straining dog?

My secret dream is for a fully enclosed yard.  I think constantly about how we’d configure it to go around our driveway.  So I feel you.

Kari – we do that too! In fact, when I first stayed with my husband and his roommate, I was cautioned to wear shoes at all times because they had never (ever in two years) cleaned their floors.  Swept, yes.  Mopped, no.  I got in the habit and it stuck.  We wear flip flops at all times, and our floors are swept but not cleaned nearly as often as they should be.  I sweep every couple of days because we have two serious shedders (one cat, one dog) and in that time I sweep up enough fur that cats have been known to mistake it for another creature and hiss at it.

Janna – you made ME laugh out loud.  Great confession!

Tessabella76 – Amen.  Don’t think about weddings for a month.  One whole month!  Then you’ll be able to look back more fondly, and not just with relief that it’s over.  We honeymooned for a week and I still felt like you do.  (And congrats!)

Mrs. Gilmore – I don’t think I’d want to move either, though I’d probably take a more fun/ less stable job.  It’s not that we do our laundry separately; it’s that I don’t do laundry.  So, if laundry is being done, Joey is doing it (and he’s nice enough to include mine).  He points out that he’s not good at doing laundry regularly either, so when he does he’s looking for specific things that need to be worn the next day (hence my comment that he’s nice enough to sneak some of mine in).  When I was single I hated laundry so much I used to send it out.  This was much cheaper and practical in NYC, but I carried the habit through Chicago to Knoxville.  Frankly, I prefer to do laundry in a laundromat (not that I do, though!) because you get it all done at once in ten loads.

Great, now I’m wondering if we should spend our Saturday at the laundromat.  Don’t worry, we won’t.

Anyway, what fun that post was!  Thanks for playing!