Happy New Year

Happy New Year 2008!

Lots of developments have occurred during the past month or so. The current status that I am at is that I have taken the step to move in with AL. This is absolutely huge, seeing as she lives up in Battle Ground, which is 30 minutes away from Portland (in good traffic), 1 hour or more during rush hour. This has come with pluses and minuses, definitely more pluses right now than the latter.

Some of the minuses. Giving up my privacy. But she has also given this up, and even more so when you factor in that I am moving into _her_ home. Another large minus, now living 30 minutes from where I work. That's in good traffic, with rush hour, it's literally that, an hour of traffic time. So now I'm going from a 20 minute commute, to an hour or more.

Another minus is that there is no place to "run". If we get into an argument (and we've had our share during this growth in our relationship) I can't really escape. I can't get far away from her out of earshot so that I can mutter about her to myself. But neither does she. We definitely have to come to an agreement that either of us can leave at any point and that it's okay. In her words, I need my "Man Cave" and she needs her reciprocal escape route.

The pluses? The companionship. It's nice to come home and have another living being in the house. It's nice to sometimes have to think of "the other person" in the house when it comes to dinner plans, night plans, helping take care of chores. Then of course the sex... definitely a benefit.

Over these past months I have been moving slowly into her place. First a few changes of clothes, then some personal products, and now some of the larger moves. Over this past month, she's allowed me to put in my own dresser (from IKEA, looks decent, but was cheap), and recently the larger step of moving up my computer. My computer is my life-line, which sounds sad. But it is the tool which provides my lively hood. This was a sticking point between myself and my ex-wife.

My ex viewed the computer as just a toy. A replacement for interactions with her, to something that I used to take up my free time from other productive tasks. I broached this topic with AL, to let her know that this was a strong point of contention between my ex and myself, and that the fact of the computer was still there. I do spend a significant amount of time on it, I use it every day for work, for email, for communication. I use it for paying bills, for working on future projects, for cultivating possible income opportunities. I also use it for more nefarious purposes, for acquiring music, for playing games (warcraft is my vice), for downloading movies, etc.

ALs uses appear to include less than what I do. She uses it for internet, for looking up information, resources, for communication. But that's where it ends.

So I've opened the door to this discussion, in hopes that we could communicate about it sooner rather than later, so that it doesn't deteriorate our already precarious relationship. She's taken the stance that she won't allow it to eat up too much of my time, that there are other things I can be working on (home improvements, I assume), other activities I can be doing out from in front of the computer. But those aren't always in my interest. It will be a challenge.