Vacation

Well, we just got back from a week at the Oregon Coast.  Couldn't have had better weather if we had ordered it in advance.   Every day warm, sunny, not too windy...and this is NOT usual for the Oregon coast in October.  In ANY month, really.  Someone was smiling on us...

We didn't do much.  Relaxed, shopped, walked on the beach with the dog, built campfires in the evenings, enjoyed the wildlife.  We went down to Bandon; haven't been there in almost six years.  Still a lot the same...things don't change too quickly anywhere in Oregon, as a general rule.  Some new shops in Old Town, but those come and go practically yearly, anyway.  Didn't buy too much CRAP.  I've been trying to cut down on my rampant consumerism disease.

We did have several good, deep conversations about our relationship and where it has been the last five years, where it should be heading.  Not easy to have these discussions  There's a certain amount of dredging up of old stuff--stuff we'd rather not talk about--that has to be done in order to clean it up and make a base for a new, spiffed up relationship.  We had to come to realize we're NOT where we'd like to be with each other...figure out how we got there, and how to get back where we want to be.  I wondered aloud how my family would react if they knew we spent difficult hours dealing with our marital problems.  One sister's husband is in jail for the next ten years. One has been married for 13 years to an obsessive compulsive verbal abuser.  And one sister is the caretaker in a twenty-year marriage to a middle aged beer-a-holic recently diagnosed with heart disease.   So... my sisters have never been a good sounding board for my relationship problems with my husband!  They think I have it easy...and, compared to them, I do. 

But we've been on a rocky road over the last five years, and we're just now starting to climb out of that pit to the promise of something better.  This past week at the coast put us well along a new, smoother road.