Going Green (with Envy)

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This is the second to last post in the carnival of sins; I’ve so far covered:

1. Lust
2. Vanity/Pride
3. Wrath, and
4. Glutton & Greed,

with Envy and Sloth to go. What will I do on Tuesdays after that?

You know, I realize that I’ve been mostly talking in the past tense and the goal of the carnival was to discuss how the sins related to current life. That being the goal, today, I’m not giving you any background. Seriously, this will be one of my shortest posts, ever, without a long, off-track, rambling travel into childhood. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?

Envy can be described as a feeling of discontent or covetousness with regard to another’s advantages, success, possessions, etc. [link]. I don’t think I have too huge a problem with Envy, honestly. I think I’m pretty average – I mean, Iwant shinier things sometimes, but not the cost or responsibility, so I’m happy enough with what I’ve got. I know, boring.

Here’s how Envy does touch me:

I know people who have these happy, supportive relationships – They’ve been married for X years and they’re still in love, they’ve got a great sex life, separate and mutual friends, interests together and on their own.

I don’t envy them because I know that they deserve to be where they are. They worked for it, they didn’t accept things that were unacceptable and they either looked or were found by the right person in the right way to make things more than right. I’m happy for them, genuinely. And I think that if I work on my stuff and then open up myself to whatever might happen, eventually someone who has worked on their stuff might come along, and I’ll have a much greater chance of being that kind of couple. But right now, I’m also okay if I’m not.

I know people who have kids that spoke in full sentences at 18 months, others successfully potty trained at the same time or earlier, others slept through the night at four months and are still doing it.

I don’t envy them because I get to watch Isobel grow a little more each day and I think she’s smart regardless of her mispronounciation of clock (think, without the L) or if she prefers to poop in pull ups. She is such a different kiddo, with interest and stubbornness and energy and lethargy all at the same time. Her awesomeness means that I will only envy another parent at extreme moments, such as when I’ve been woken up and and am still awake with a snot-covered child two hours later, or when she’s thrown herself down on the floor for the 18th time in 97 minutes (and hit her chin doing it. And now wants me to comfort her when the whole damn thing was cuz she was too damn stubborn to not put the toothbrush down the sink drain).

I am envious on a certain level, of people who are childless, spouseless (or ex spouseless) and able to live a life entirely absorbed in their own shit, if they want. They can go to school without concern for daycare fees and locations; they can work for a paycheque, not a daycare payment (in order to be able to go to work. Get it? Daycare in Vancouver is evil.); they can show off their T & As and tattoos and piercings and dye their hair and cut it all off and wear it down – whenever they want; they also are guaranteed time to shower, shave and put on makeup after styling their hair.

I don’t get to do those things right now because I’m a one-woman show. I can shower when Isobel is sleeping or in her high chair – and she’s boycotting the high chair, so now only when she’s asleep. But only if the sound will not wake her, since the bathroom is right beside her bedroom – so she’s gotta be out cold. So I have about an hour a day when I’m awake myself, that I could shower. But you know, that one hour when she’s out cold and won’t wake up from a creak in the floor? It gets used up doing dishes and laundry and cleaning and anything else that is remotely noisy and that she’s not down with me doing during waking hours.

I won’t go into the other stuff. Basically, I have this little person to work around at all times, and so everything else that I’d love to work into my (our) life? It gets pushed backwards until I can find the time to take a freaking shower.

Here’s the strongest sense of envy, before I end off. JDawg. He gets to work and come home (wherever that may be) and sit and do nothing. He can (and does) drink and be high whenever he wants to be outside of work. He can go out every night with friends and get plastered, if he wants to. Because he doesn’t ever have a child to come home to take care of. Even when this was his home, he wasn’t the ‘take care of’ type of dad, once the playing time ended.

Since we separated last summer, he’s not had to put her to sleep more than twice – and that was at my house, when I was too sick to stand. She’s never stayed at his place(s), nor has he tried to have her do so, because he, “likes having fun too much.”

I envy that. I don’t want the guilt I know he feels sometimes about it. But I do sometimes wish for that part-time freedom. That time when nothing else matters and being irresponsible means more than making Kraft Dinner for a toddler.

I envy him for getting to be a selfish ass, I guess you could say.