Yes, I have an agenda now, to schedule things in and remind myself to get things done. It doesn't help if I don't write everything I need to do in there. Like keep up with this blog. I am making a note of my next scheduled post date right now. Honestly!
Two months ago, I was starting out my grandly-titled (in my mind, anyway) "Year End Reading Project". A Song of Ice and Fire (Books 1-4) had been languishing on my TBR (to-be-read) shelf for more than a year since my birthday of 2012, and I decided it was time to give them a go. Or, I should say, another go. I started reading A Game of Thrones in October 2012, but quit within the first hundred pages. I simply couldn't get into the book, and the author's use of character names instead of chapter numbers almost guaranteed I would end up confused and lost about who was whom, much as I was the first time I read The Lord of the Rings.
However, I decided that four months left in the year and four books in my boxed set was serendipitous, so I embarked (again) on the journey into the fantasy of George R. R. Martin. I resolved to read the books on my lunch break at work, and read something else on the weekends. I bought myself a book to use as a book journal, so that I could keep people straight, then discovered that the books had appendices naming the major, and not a few of the minor, characters.
Fast forward two months, and instead of being halfway through, I am very nearly done with all four books. I have been sucked into the Westerosi universe, and leave only reluctantly. As a consequence, I read the second book over the space of 4 days, and the third and fourth in about two weeks each. I only managed to stay true to my original calendar with the first book. The fifth is now on its way, ordered via Amazon.ca, thank goodness.
Since I took over the organization of our home finances, things have been somewhat more orderly. After a mis-communication that saw us over-paying the hydro and under-paying the gas bills, G and I have worked out a system whereby he opens and sorts the mail, hands off all the bills to me, I input them into the spreadsheet I use for tracking, and all bills are sorted into 3 neatly labeled caddies (one for unpaid, two for paid). At any point in time, I can hand him all outstanding bills if needed, or confirm all paid bills. Although I pay everything online, I print the payment confirmations. Computer systems do fail, occasionally.
Another recent contribution of mine to our "home economics", is the use of a menu plan for weeknight meals and grocery shopping. For some many months, one of my main bones of contention with G has been how late we eat on weeknights. Often it is not until he collects me after work that he turns his mind to what we will eat for dinner, and that usually means some amount of waiting for food to be prepared. Jamaicans do not eat dinner at 9:30 p.m. very often, at least not the ones I know. However, that was becoming a normal practice for us, and it began to annoy me to no end. Two weeks ago, I decided to end this practice by using one of the dozen or more cookbooks we have as a basis for menu-planning. Specifically, Betty Crocker's Big Book of Weeknight Dinners.
The results have been encouraging so far. Rather than going to the supermarket every couple weeks and spending $300-400 to buy random items we might like to eat, and still complaining that there's nothing available to make dinner (or lunch for work), we select recipes for each night, plan our shopping list accordingly, and I make weeknight dinners now, with help from G where needed. Leftovers become lunch the following day, and usually there are leftovers. So far we have not spent more than $140 on each week, and it has not been necessary for me to purchase lunch (usually between $5 and $10 per day), or any items specifically for lunch (such as prepared salads). Saturdays and Sundays, meals remain G's sole responsibility.
As of this week, and for the foreseeable future, I will not need a lunch anymore. My hours have been cut at work, the usual "budget cutback" cry has become fashionable in my workplace. It came as a blow, but with many of the major bills out of the way for this year, such as the property tax, I won't complain. For the rest of the year, or until my hours go up again, we will just have to tighten the belt a little further. As a Jamaican, this is nothing new to me. I am new to being a part-time employee, having been employed full-time in salaried positions since I started working at 20, but with a new life comes new things.
Something new is up next tonight: With the end of the Showtime series Dexter, it became necessary for G and I to find a favourite series to spend some of our "couple time" watching. After seeing my enthusiasm over the Game of Thrones book, he agreed to give the HBO series based on the books a try. We are halfway through the first of three seasons, but I can confidently say we have a new favourite series!
Showing posts with label relationship challenges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label relationship challenges. Show all posts
Monday, November 4, 2013
Friday, July 20, 2012
Challenges
This isn't easy to do, you know. It's a huge undertaking, to move your entire life to a new country and settle somewhere completely different from what you've known all your life until then. However, it's obvious from looking at human history that immigration is do-able, and not only have people endured it for millennia, they have thrived on it, too.
I still find time for the immigration forum. At first I was sure that once arrived in Canada I would have no time for it, but the truth is that the subject interests me, quite apart from my own personal experience. I follow it avidly in the news: whatever changes Canada makes to its immigration regulations may impact us one way or another, or someone I know. I want to stay informed, and I want to pass on to others what I know so they can navigate these waters too.
What I see sometimes on the forum from others who have completed their processing is that their period of adjustment is harder than they expected, and the couples must work really hard to overcome the challenges arising from being together all the time. Some of these couples never spent any appreciable time living together in Jamaica, and others have. Some have even lived together in Canada before. Still, there is a period of adjustment after the immigration process is complete that calls on them to remember their commitment to each other and why they made this choice in the first place.
Our challenge comes in the form of G's health. He is used to navigating the Canadian health system, I am not. It is routine to him to endure monthly, weekly or random treatments as necessary for his health condition. He knows the nurses, the doctors, the hospitals. I do not. So, of course, I have to ask him questions that might seem redundant or perhaps ridiculous, and I have to observe closely everything that happens to him to understand what is going on.
Given that he hates the treatments, although he has endured them for the better part of a decade now, and given that he will need them for the rest of his natural life unless some miracle cure is found for his body's persistent rejection of the iron necessary to form his lifeblood, I expected he would be more resigned, so to speak to his treatments. Instead, he resents each one as if it is the first, as if the "weakness" that results is a fresh, unforeseen betrayal of what he expects from himself and he does not understand why things are the way they are.
Perhaps it is the Jamaican in me that fatalistically expects struggle and believes one should simply forge ahead once hard times are encountered , grim-faced and with gritted teeth perhaps, but always accepting that things are as they are quickly and moving to with dealing with them. Or perhaps it is some other part of my heritage manifesting itself. Whatever it is, something in me becomes exasperated at his railing at his body and his illness, and simply wants to press on and deal with it as best as possible.
Then I think to myself about how I felt about my asthma when it was worse, and I rein in my feelings and try to walk more in his shoes. I hated the occasional betrayal of my body that was every attack, no matter how mild. Yet I had lived with asthma since I was nine years old, surely I should have been used to it! I acknowledge then that I need to empathise more, to see more of his reactions in myself, and it makes me ashamed of my impatience with his reactions and I allow that he has full as much reason as I ever did, and quite likely more, to feel as he does.
It is this empathy that I will need to cultivate and draw on more if we are to deal successfully with all the challenges that will come in this settling in period. I may be the one who did the moving, but we are both adjusting and sometimes I have to consciously remind myself of this and use it to examine his actions and my reactions and vice versa.
Challenges are a part of any marriage. No matter how well-suited and how compatible they might be, every couple is two very different halves working to be one whole, happy unit. Add the stresses of life and the choices we make such as immigration, and the mettle of any relationship can be tested and pushed beyond anything the couple themselves might have expected. With this in mind, I remind myself, daily if need be, that when all is said and done, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but by his side, so I will always work at gaining all the skills and qualities I need to meet him in his own efforts to secure the strength and happiness of our union.
I still find time for the immigration forum. At first I was sure that once arrived in Canada I would have no time for it, but the truth is that the subject interests me, quite apart from my own personal experience. I follow it avidly in the news: whatever changes Canada makes to its immigration regulations may impact us one way or another, or someone I know. I want to stay informed, and I want to pass on to others what I know so they can navigate these waters too.
What I see sometimes on the forum from others who have completed their processing is that their period of adjustment is harder than they expected, and the couples must work really hard to overcome the challenges arising from being together all the time. Some of these couples never spent any appreciable time living together in Jamaica, and others have. Some have even lived together in Canada before. Still, there is a period of adjustment after the immigration process is complete that calls on them to remember their commitment to each other and why they made this choice in the first place.
Our challenge comes in the form of G's health. He is used to navigating the Canadian health system, I am not. It is routine to him to endure monthly, weekly or random treatments as necessary for his health condition. He knows the nurses, the doctors, the hospitals. I do not. So, of course, I have to ask him questions that might seem redundant or perhaps ridiculous, and I have to observe closely everything that happens to him to understand what is going on.
Given that he hates the treatments, although he has endured them for the better part of a decade now, and given that he will need them for the rest of his natural life unless some miracle cure is found for his body's persistent rejection of the iron necessary to form his lifeblood, I expected he would be more resigned, so to speak to his treatments. Instead, he resents each one as if it is the first, as if the "weakness" that results is a fresh, unforeseen betrayal of what he expects from himself and he does not understand why things are the way they are.
Perhaps it is the Jamaican in me that fatalistically expects struggle and believes one should simply forge ahead once hard times are encountered , grim-faced and with gritted teeth perhaps, but always accepting that things are as they are quickly and moving to with dealing with them. Or perhaps it is some other part of my heritage manifesting itself. Whatever it is, something in me becomes exasperated at his railing at his body and his illness, and simply wants to press on and deal with it as best as possible.
Then I think to myself about how I felt about my asthma when it was worse, and I rein in my feelings and try to walk more in his shoes. I hated the occasional betrayal of my body that was every attack, no matter how mild. Yet I had lived with asthma since I was nine years old, surely I should have been used to it! I acknowledge then that I need to empathise more, to see more of his reactions in myself, and it makes me ashamed of my impatience with his reactions and I allow that he has full as much reason as I ever did, and quite likely more, to feel as he does.
It is this empathy that I will need to cultivate and draw on more if we are to deal successfully with all the challenges that will come in this settling in period. I may be the one who did the moving, but we are both adjusting and sometimes I have to consciously remind myself of this and use it to examine his actions and my reactions and vice versa.
Challenges are a part of any marriage. No matter how well-suited and how compatible they might be, every couple is two very different halves working to be one whole, happy unit. Add the stresses of life and the choices we make such as immigration, and the mettle of any relationship can be tested and pushed beyond anything the couple themselves might have expected. With this in mind, I remind myself, daily if need be, that when all is said and done, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but by his side, so I will always work at gaining all the skills and qualities I need to meet him in his own efforts to secure the strength and happiness of our union.
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