Problem Solved

I'll never look at laundry the same.
Luckily, I'm feeing better today..*guilty look*. So I went ahead and started some laundry and dishes.
It snowed last night, kinda weird since in Eugene we hardly ever see snow, and if we do it doesn't stick. But it snowed last night and it stuck, and it's MARCH for god's sake! I'm glad we live south of Portland though, because it piled up on the west side of the city, inches upon inches. I've never understood why people would live in places like Michigan where it snows like mad. I still enjoy the snow, probably because I've always lived where it's a brief and exciting occurence.
It took Aaron almost an hour to get the 6 miles to work this morning, cuz Oregonians don't know how to drive in snow for shit.
So it looks like I'll be hanging out in the house today, no trips into town. Tonight Mina's going to be performing in a 1st grade music presentation. She's pretty excited about it. I'm just glad that I can go, and be there for her. When I was working at the plasma center I couldn't make any promises to her since I never knew what time I'd actually be out of there. It's nice to be able to be there when she needs me and not just keep saying "I'm sorry, I can't, I have to work, suck it up baby cuz life's hard and you don't always get what you want." It actually worked out really well, because Aaron got offered dinner and a Blazers game with some co-workers courtesy of a client. I was like "cool, that sounds like fun, have a good time." I think he still expects me to wig out about that kind of stuff, and get mad that he's not spending more time with me. Mina and I would've just hung out around the house, maybe had popcorn and a movie, and gone to bed. Instead, we're going to the music thing so it worked out very nicely.
It's funny, he's trying to win Mina over, but carefully. He's been skirting around the edges of disciplining her and playing with her, trying not to overstep his place while getting her to relax and be herself around him. She's really a low maintenance kid. I've barely even seen her since she started school. We get up in the morning and get her ready for school, then she doesn't get back until almost 4:00, when she gets home she grabs a snack and absorbs herself in cartoons for a while, plays in her room until dinner, eats, gets her pjs on and we read together before bed, unless I'm not feeling up for it, in which case she reads to herself for a while.
Very low maintenance. She's not the kind of kid who bounces off the walls very often, she's not generally whiny, or constantly in need of attention. That's one of the reasons that when she does seek out my attention I really want to give it to her, not have to tell her I'm too busy for her. And it's also why when she does get really whiny or temperamental, I know that she needs me to give her a little extra attention and really listen when she talks. I just hope she'll drop her guard and give Aaron a chance. The only other man in her life was Nic, and he never really offered her any affection or understanding, he just got annoyed when she didn't just act like a little automaton who was perfectly behaved at all times. Yet despite his lack of consideration for her, she still felt his loss, and still asks about him. She got attached to him, and I think she's a bit scared to get attached to Aaron.
She did open up a bit the other night. I had finished dinner and gotten up, and came back in after a bit to see her and Aaron picking the bell peppers out of their fajitas and talking about her day. Usually though, Aaron tries to goof around with her and she just gives him a dirty look like, "stop being so immature".
You know, there was one other man in her life that she got totally attached to, my sister's ex-fiance Ken. She loved Ken, of course she was pretty young back then, but he just made her glow when he was around, he was her favorite family member. Of course, the whole damned family loved Ken, he was more a member of the family than Angie's previous husband had been. But we didn't have to live with him, and Angie did and it wasn't always so easy, so we had to let Ken go. That was really hard on Mina, she continued to ask about Ken for probably two years after that.
It's funny, some of the best times I've had with her have been right before bedtime when she shares her day and I share mine, and we read together, and I give her a kiss and hug and say goodnight, and she asks for another kiss and hug, and another, and giggles when she won't let go of me, and I have to tickle her to make her convulse enough to get away. She's got a really sharp sense of humor, she thinks she's a teenager most of the time, she'll respond to something I say with a heavy sigh and "whatever". It makes me laugh every time. Here I am trying to be strict and get her to behave, and then she makes me laugh and it's all down the tubes. The problem is that some other people would see her response as being disrespectful, but she and I know that we're just having fun. It's her way of letting me know that I'm being too serious and I need to lighten up.

Anyway, well that was a long post. I was intending to say that I've noticed that I'm a lot more forgiving with her, and feel a lot more energetic and positive about playing with her than usual. I think it's because I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders since I moved here. I don't feel like I'm responsible for not only keeping my own shit together but also for supporting my friends in keeping theirs together. Don't take it wrong you guys, it's something that I bring on myself, and really isn't anyone else's fault. I just got to the point that I was spending so much time and energy trying to keep everybody else happy, that I forgot about myself. Having the space to really take care of myself has been wonderful, I sleep better, I don't eat as much, I haven't craved sweets in weeks now, my face has cleared up, I'm cooking real food, taking long baths, reading my books that I've been putting off for so long because I always had something I needed to do that was more important than what I wanted to do. Now, if I don't really want to do something, I just won't. It can wait, there's no pressure from Aaron to keep things perfect and running smoothly at all times, so there's no internal pressure to meet his expectations. He keeps telling me that he'll do stuff and that I don't have to. Excellent reverse psychology. With my stubborn streak, I react much better to being told that I don't have to do something, than to being told that I need to. Like last night he mentioned that he would take out the trash, so I took it out this morning. He keeps saying I don't have to do the dishes, or the laundry, which makes me even more likely to do them because I want to, not because I'm being nagged about it.

I don't think he even realizes that he's completely undermining the effect of my stubborn streak. He's just trying to be considerate, but it just happens to be the right way to get me moving. Sheer luck on his part.

Sooner or later he'll end up pushing me about something and see my stubborn little heels dig in, and discover just how frustrating I can be.