On Choosing Beer, Sushi & Happiness...

If you've been with me over on G+ this past week, then you know I've hit a patch of general fatigue, restlessness and malcontentment from working at home while being a stay at home parent. And I think those patches are just part and parcel of the overall human condition, but that are perhaps magnified or protracted by the stay at home parenting thing.

Not that some of us can't be really and truly fulfilled in that career path alone, but that a lot of us choose it for the time being because it is the path that makes the most sense for our families, even if we have the option to do it differently.

beer +

Actually, come to think of it, I've taken the other option in a past life too. I've worked full time with others caring for my children while I was at the office, and I can say that the same frustrations arise when your desire to be a present parent butts up against pretty much all your other non-parenting desires and ambitions.

Add to that the general fatigue of having a little one who still keeps odd hours that are not compatible with your own odd hours, and you are bound to have moments. Moments in which you would like to escape your life for just a few moments. Not that you don't love your life. And not that you're not grateful. But just that you're frustrated. And because against your better and sound judgment, it feels like there is nothing to be done to change your situation.

To make it worse, a piece of you wants to wallow in that frustration until it wells up in your chest and makes you want to cry in a big, pathetic heaping pile of self shitty pity.

The truth is, sometimes, there really is nothing to be done to change the situation right then and there. Sometimes, in order to be good, happy, healthy and fulfilled human beings, we have to commit for a time to things that frustrate us because it is truly the best for everyone, self included, in the long run. Sometimes, without giving up on ourselves and our dreams, we have to have patience for our temporary situations because we realize that they are serving a very good purpose.

sushi =

And sometimes the only good thing to be done in those moments when you can't, and perhaps shouldn't, be trying to alter the root cause of your frustration, is to choose to allow some totally unrelated but totally accessible thing to make you happy in the moment and to make the necessary wait less painful.

It only took me 15 minutes of straight bitching, moaning, whining and downloading to The (Very Empathetic) Man after he asked what he could do for me to stop and look in his eyes long enough to see his genuine desire to help me through the moment by doing something, anything, to make it better. And to realize that nothing I was doing was helping or allowing him to help me and partner with me, through this piece of our life together.

It was only after speaking the same frustrations and annoyances aloud in several different words and crying into the dishes that I was so fucking sick of washing and running out of different ways to express the same nowhere leading negativity that I realized how tiring, and frankly tiresome, I was being. To both of us.

But I didn't want Dean to take Izzy off my hands while I left the house. I'd missed him all day. And I didn't want him to take over the dishes because my irrational compulsion to finish them, because I'd started them, wouldn't let me let him do the dishes. And in the end, I don't really want to go back to work in an office right now. I love being home with Izzy, and I'd be a fool not to cherish a second chance to cherish one of my children in a way life had not allowed for before...

But the road to Impossibly Unhappy is paved with those kinds of can'ts and wont's. And before you know it, you've set down so many stones, you're practically there.

So I had to pick something, anything, in that moment, and allow it to make me happy. And perhaps more importantly, to allow Dean to make me happy.

Beer and sushi.

That's never not made us happy.

And Dean was truly happy to oblige.

And I was happy.

For the beer and the sushi of course.

But mostly for the choice I made to let the beer and sushi and Dean make me happy. ^^

happiness ^^

shinae

On Tiny Tyrants, the Importance of QT & Date Night @ PAON, Carlsbad...

When the big monsters were babies, I always had built-in family babysitters if I ever wanted or needed to go anywhere, so it wasn't that long ago that I thought the mere concept of Date Night a silly one. I likened it to one of those clumsy, rife with expectation and potential for failure sitcom scenarios in which a marriage counselor tells you to get gussied up, "accidentally" meet at a bar, pretend to be strangers, try to seduce one another, and let the general awkwardness and hilarity of role playing ensue.

a goat cheese and puff pastry small bite to
enjoy with our wine tasting

Because - who does that? 

I mean, who needs to try that hard to spend a little QT with someone to whom you have presumably cleaved for the rest of your life??

And aren't you spending all kinds of time with that person anyway???

Don't you live under the same roof and sleep in the same bed????

Well, YES. You do generally breathe the same air, eat the same food, sleep under the same covers, vegetate on the same couch and zombie walk through the same hallway...

carrying over the paon (French for peacock) theme...

Because you are also both slaves to a tiny, curious, wide eyed tyrant who demands you pay whatever is left of your frayed, frazzled and generally sleep deprived resources to her, loves to climb things and terrorize the family pet, thinks sleep is for weenies and weaklings, and only succumbs to it as briefly as is needed to recharge her evil but adorable internal Energizer bunny battery. Oh, and when she does, it's sideways, in the middle of your bed. And she happens to be a very tall evil but adorable tiny tyrant...

And then all those hours spent in the same space are no longer together. What's left of you is often tired, testy, and generally unfit for human consumption. Someone is getting the Q from your T, and it's not either one of you.

La Cuadrilla 2011 by Stolpman Vineyards

Which is mostly as it should be. That someone is only little once, and in the grand scheme of things, only for a short while.

But then one day, and sooner than you know it, she'll be off in her own home, fighting her own sleep deprived battles with her own tiny tyrant, trying to find some QT with the father of said tiny tyrant, and the two of you will have several many chapters of your lives left to spend together with more T on your hands than you've ever had before and know what to do with.

Veal Sweetbreads

Whether there's any Q in that T will largely depend on whether you took and/or made opportunities to nurture your relationship and give it a life both integrated with, and independent of, your parenting careers.

And all of a sudden, Date Night starts to sound not only like a not silly thing to do, but an absolutely intelligent and necessary thing to do.

Mission Fig Salad

A few unhurried hours away in which you can both remember yourself, the other, and your relationship for what it is and can be beyond the things that take you away from it - even the good things, like tiny, amazing, adorable, precious tyrants.

Enter Paon Restaurant and Wine Bar. A rare find in our neck of the woods - a lovely, quiet and relaxed environment with a sophisticated but casual menu, a great wine selection, music that lends to the ambience and doesn't detract with its volume, a proprietor who still makes the rounds to ensure the quality of your experience, and friendly, attentive, unobtrusive and ungimmicky service. All for about what it would cost to eat at that noisy, mediocre, overrated, oversalted upper-ish end chain restaurant.

Braised Beef Short Rib

The kind of place that was made for Date Night.

That we happened to stumble upon their inaugural wine tasting event and were warmly invited to partake of it was just extra scrummy caramel sauce on our cannoli.

Cannoli with Banana Creme & Caramel Sauce

A little splurge at their wine shop didn't hurt, either. 

And then you come home nourished, refreshed, recharged, reenergized, and recommitted.

To each other.

And all your awesome current, and once were, tiny tyrants.

Date Night. It's not just for weenies anymore.

shinae

Paon Restaurant & Wine Bar
2975 Roosevelt Street
Carlsbad, CA 92008
760.729.7377
www.paoncarlsbad.com

Full album HERE.

On Love, Luxury & Lobster Tails on Sale...

In another life, I had twice the money, owned three times the number of houses, and shopped ten times more than I do today, yet I feel infinitely richer now than I did then.

And though the journey to this place was rocky, winding, complex, complicated and downright dangerous at times, if I had to distill the difference between then and now down to one thing, it would be LOVE.

My Love and I, we love the lobster... :P

That I came to love myself enough to live a life that was right for my soul and my conscience, even if it meant painfully extracting myself from a life that others thought was right for them and in which I played a big part.

And that in so doing, I found true love with someone who loved all the things about me that I love about myself, including my children. Who was capable of loving me fully when it looked like I had absolutely nothing in the world to offer but love.

Who supported and enabled me to spend my days doing what I love without promise of anything returned but my love and respect for him.

And I don't mean that pacifistic, feel good, all you need is love kind of love.

A life and identity that took decades to build and almost all of the relationships that came with it had to die for this love. Assets and net worth and credit ratings and legal rights and even maternal rights for a time, had to die for this love.

We also love a good lager to wash down the lobster...

The path to this love was a battlefield, and war was Hell.

But when you can sit down at the end of the day to a lovely little lobster roll with the love of your life having spent your day doing what you love, even if that lobster was only $5.99 per tail on sale, it is an absolute privilege and luxury afforded you at that point in your life when you're willing to pay with all the things you think you possess that don't really matter for the one thing that really does.

shinae

Full album HERE.