Hey, Jealousy . . .

(Brownie points if you can remember the band that did the title song . . . it's stuck in my head right now and I'm too lazy to look it up . . .)

You know, I am usually pretty happy with my life as it is . . . I mean, there other things that I would love to do and learn and places I would love to go to and houses I’d love to live in . . . but for the most part, I’m married to a pretty awesome guy and we aren’t on the street and we are relatively healthy, and my job isn’t that horrible.

However, sometimes there are days when things hit you the wrong way . . . and you start questioning your own choices, and the green monster of envy raises its ugly head, and you start throwing a big pity party for yourself, wailing “why not me?!?!” . . .

So, yesterday was one of those days.

First, I greeted the day with getting an e-mail from a friend of mine, saying that he and his wife just bought a lovely three level townhouse inside the Beltway, and were closing on it that day. Yay, FOK! (Friend of Kath) This was awesome news . . . they had been struggling for quite a while, my friend worked in Telecomm and was laid off, like, 5 times in the past 5 years and his wife does something very service oriented, and quite awesome, but made no money either. They have been trying to save for a house forever, so this was happy, happy news . . .

So why was I so disgruntled at the core?

Well, on Sunday, Mr. Random and I went to an open house of a townhouse development near where we live. We were really curious about what these townhouses look like inside, so we ambled over to see. The price on the thing was way beyond what we could ever realistically afford, but we just wanted to know. So we go and the place is just gorgeous. Three levels, lots of light, 3 nice sized bedrooms, 3.5 baths, a lower level which had a laundry room big enough to be a darkroom. A huge family room space. A newly renovated kitchen. The bathrooms were lovely – and the wallpaper was actually decent looking. Our cat would have had a field day running up and down the stairs. It had great flow for parties. The realtor was the nicest guy and we talked to him for a while, since we had gone through the housing market last year and could swap horror stories. If I had any kind of money, I would have bought the place on the spot.

We walk back home to our little 2 bedroom walk-up condo with the hideous green rug, and ugly kitchen and do a bit more daydreaming, and then, grumpily, go on about the rest of the day. So when we hear that our two friends bought a similar type of townhouse, it’s like . . . darn! Aren’t we losers?

Then later yesterday, I get an e-mail from a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while, letting us know that he and his wife just had a little baby girl, and here are the pictures. After the initial, “What? They were pregnant?” I gushed over the pictures, forwarding them over to Mr. Random, and sent a cheerful note of congratulations to my friends, stating how gorgeous the baby was and I hoped they were doing well, yada, yada, yada.

When I got home, however . . .

My mood dropped like a stone. I was so bummed – Gee, everyone’s life’s changing for the better but ours. What the heck am I doing? We’ll never have a nice house, we don’t make that kind of money. Even if we did have a kid, we’d have to shove them in the fugly guest room with the horrid carpet. This isn’t what I want . . . blah, blah, blah . . .

At least I recognize when I'm being whiny. That's improvement, I think . . .

This is a stressful time of year and you start to reflect on what's happened and the choices you've made. I know I'm not ready to have a child, but I do want one. I know that I'm a lousy housekeeper and that it would be hell for me to maintain a larger place . . . heck, I'm hardly at home half the time, much less being Suzy Homemaker.

But sometimes, sitting in the back of your head are all the things that you aspire to, and sometimes you get impatient when you see other people with those things before you. Sometimes you don't want to go through the slog that you need to get through to get to the place where you are ready to get/have these things - you just want it now!

So you cause yourself huge ulcers coveting your neighbor's things, and stop enjoying the stuff you have. But then you wake up and realize that you aren't your neighbor, and you really don't want their life - there are so many things that go on that others don't see - and then you go back to trying to live your life the best you can with what you have.

Um, so what was the point of this post?

Gee, sometimes even I forget . . . well, I just wanted to share that we all get unhappy with the way things are, and sometimes other people's happiness triggers our own pain . . . but sometimes it takes a while to get our heads back where the need to be . . . we need to live our lives each day for ourselves and no one else.

One of my friends says that we will get what we want when the Universe knows that we are ready to fully receive it . . . stuff happens for a reason, so don't get so discouraged.

Thus ends the "cliche of the day" portion of today's post. Hope to do better tomorrow. For some reason I just had to write this all down . . .