Happy Friday everyone! I hope you have some fabulous plans for the weekend. We have a work event to go to for David's job tonight, which should be pretty fun. Oh! I also wanted to mention that Joslyn over at Simple Lovely asked me to do a list of favorites so go check it out! Thanks Joslyn!
So, I found myself this morning still thinking about perspective and the way we can allow our attitudes to shape our daily lives. As I've mentioned before, David is a 3rd year Resident. On top of the fact that residency usually means lots of call and long hours he is also Chief Resident now, so he spends many of the hours he is home working on things such as the call schedule. If he is on call on a Saturday we've lost an entire weekend. It is very easy to get frustrated by the lack of time we have together. When he first started medical school seven years ago, I would get so angry over his absence. I would find myself counting hours until he came home, and if he ended up being later than I expected I would grow so anxious and irritated. Not only was this not fair to him, but not fair to me and my own time. Quickly, I realized I needed to change my behavior when I saw that my negative attitude was affecting how he felt about going off to work. Nothing would have made me more sad than to know he dreaded his job each day because of how it affected our marriage. So, slowly I began to make adjustments.
One of the first things I changed was the way we delt with his hours. He never knows the exact time he'll be home, particularly the morning after he's been on call. What helped me find a rythym to our lives was if I made a sort of constant work schedule. For my own need to have regularity I have established that he gets home by 6pm. Days after he's been on call I assume he'll be home by noon, but that he'll need to sleep until 3pm. Most of the time this isn't completly accurate. Often he'll be home closer to 5. Sometimes he'll have a lot of radiographs to read and can't finish up until 7:30 or later. But as soon as I created this schedule for myself I was able to better plan my own life by knowing when to make supper, and when to make other plans. Now, if he gets home earlier it feels like a treat and if he has to work later he calls to tell me and I make adjustments. In a lot of ways nothing has changed, but giving a framework for our days kept me from being so frustrated.
Another element that I changed was what we did when we were together. Although we do like to be social, we usually will only plan one or two outside events for the week. This includes activities such as lunch with my parents. I think it can become easy to overschedule our lives and then we realize that we haven't had any quiet time as a family. We also try to do things together that requie a joint effort. If yardwork needs to be done we all go outside and take care of it. If the house need to be picked up we all divy up rooms and work as a family so we can still visit while getting the job done. If we do enough of these things together I realize that I don't mind so much if he has to spend and evening working on the schedule.
Making time for dates was a big help for us. We try to have a date once a week, although we can't always arrange to have the girls go to my parents. Sometimes I just make a special dinner for us to eat after the girls go to sleep. When we do get an actual date night away from the kids we try to do something that allows us to really visit. So, we don't really go to a lot of movies. Even when I think I want to go I end up feeling sad that we used up some precious hours sitting in silence staring at a screen. Usually we end up going to dinner and then taking a walk...something where we can actually visit. Driving is big for us. We may go eat and then take a driving tour around the city, exploring places we haven't been before.
The most significant change has really been in my outlook. I think life is a lot like the ocean. There are days where the water is still and you can see your toes, but often the water is choppy with a heavy undertow. You can fight those days...a fight of futility against the more powerful ocean, or you can go with the current, letting it take you down the coast. I choose to kick up my feet and see where the water takes me, because I know I'll never be stronger than the waves. That has been one of the best lessons I have ever learned.
