Hating Lewis

For whatever reason my evening runs during the week are never as satisfying as my long runs on the weekends. I finished 7 miles in 62 minutes last Saturday morning (first time I’ve ever run that distance). The following Tuesday, it took me about 28 minutes to run 3 miles. I think I’ve become a morning runner, for better or worse. After 2 weeks of bad evening runs, I was kind of starting to get down on myself because I just didn’t understand what was holding me back so much in the shorter runs. Then I reminded myself that I couldn’t have run 3 straight miles at this time last year. I think I topped 2 for the first time last October. So there’s really no excuse for me to be hung up on how “slow” I’m running three miles. I never really thought I’d get there, but I did.

So now I’m trying to apply the same concept to my relationship. The honeymoon period is most certainly over. We’re doing just fine-only not in fantasy land anymore. I’m blaming a lot of it on my mom though. For instance, Dan never opens the blinds in the apartment in the morning or closes them at night. I probably wouldn’t give a crap if they were open or closed-except that my mom was always on our case about it growing up and now that’s instilled in me. Same with the dishes. In the Wallace household, dishes did not enter the sink. They went straight from the table (which was the only place we were supposed to eat…) to the dishwasher. The only exception being if the dishwasher were actually running. Not clean (then we were supposed to unload it) but actually running the wash cycle. Dishes were also not allowed to sit in the sink overnight EVER. I will never forget the morning I woke up to a mac and cheese-crusted pot on my bed placed there by my father because I had left it in the sink overnight. Took me 16 years, but I had finally learned my lesson.

Apparently Dan’s parents aren’t as anal as mine, and he is totally okay with leaving dishes in the sink overnight…even for a couple of days. The blinds stay however they were when he entered the room unless some light from outside is either shining in his face or on the tv. I’ve gotten better about the dishes (mainly because I don’t want to do them since that’s his chore…) but the blinds still kill me. We only have 2 windows, it’s not that hard, right?!

Our other departure from honeymoon phase involves, no surprise, work hours. I have a fairly flexible work schedule, work standard 8 hour days 5 days a week, and only commute about 25 minutes by train each way. Dan, however, commutes between 1-1.5 hours in the car, works 10 hours a day 6 days a week and seems to be discouraged from taking any vacation time ever. He also makes less money than I do. In an ideal world, the person making less money would have the easier schedule and therefore be able to contribute to more stuff around the house, running errands, etc. Of course that’s
absolutely not the case here.

There are some evenings when I'm home for 1 or even 2 hours before Dan gets home, and Saturdays can be pretty lonely if I don't have anything else going on. This however, is where I need to circle back to my thoughts on running. For four years, we saw each other for a few days every couple of months. Once Dan started staying in North Dakota over the summer we didn't even have that uninterrupted time together either. Now I get frustrated when I only see him for three waking hours a day, sleep next to each other every night, and spend every Sunday with him. Instead of being angry at Lewis University and hung up on how much more frequently I could see him if he had a more "normal" job, I really need to focus on the fact that this is a huge improvement from a year ago, a few months ago even. I'm sure it'll take awhile for this new outlook to truly sink in, but I'll do my best to remind myself of it instead of complaining how I never get to spend any time with him.