It's Friday. Weekend is coming and I'm down deep in my on-going Libra head-trip. The endless quest for balance.

If you are a mom, if you are divorced, separated, remarried or somewhere in between, tell me please, I have know how you do it.

How do you juggle it? What do you do to create and maintain balance in your life?

Really, please, I'm begging here.

What do you do? 

I'm glad Edgar and I are getting along so well since the divorce, but I'm also a little worried about it. He was in the room when the judge declared our marriage irretrievably broken. But he's still acting like it's not.

A business call came to the house for him, so I called to pass on the message. We talked, which is how the whole thing with us got started and is something I still enjoy. I thought he sounded like he'd been drinking. But I didn't find it necessary to mention that, until he began telling me how much he misses me.

"Are you drinking?" I asked.

"No," he replied.

"There have been times," I said, "when you'd tell me you hadn't when you had. And that was part of the problem."

He had nothing to say to that.

I actually have nothing to say about that. When I divorced Ed, I also divorced his alcoholism. But it's not like I don't care. It still hurts to know he's in pain and I still can't fix it.

Addiction is cruel that way.

I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't cure it. All I can do, now that I've gotten myself to a safe space, is wish Ed well and be careful not to enable him any more.

While I'm often sad to be moving away from my home of the last 20 years, it's probably a positive thing. Putting even more space between me and the ex should be good for us both. 

Sometimes I want so badly to have a happy, intimate marriage that my heart feels like it actually hurts. The cynic in me says that no marriage is actually happy, and anyone who claims to be happy in a marriage is either lying or living in denial. The realist in me, however, knows that there must be something to this whole marriage thing because otherwise we wouldn't all be doing it, right?

Sometimes I just want to scream, "HOW DO I GET HAPPY IN THIS RELATIONSHIP?!" I want someone to tell me what to do to fix things so that I can stop living this life of emotional Atari. I want someone to take my hand and tell me that eventually, everything is going to be okay.

A big part of why I haven't ended things is because I want to believe that there is hope that this can work. What a fantastic thing it would be to someday look back on how we almost split up but then were able to repair the relationship and stay together. I think about how much stronger we can potentially be as a couple after going through all this and then coming out of it all okay.

Then I look at how lukewarm we are toward each other and I wonder if couples ever really recover from something like that.

When does a person decide to actually give up hope and file for divorce? Does it feel like a loss of hope, or does it feel more like a triumph of having made a decision finally? Is it terrifying, empowering, or both?

There's a new billboard on the highway that I drive to work every day. It pictures two pairs of feet: one small pair standing on top of a big pair. The caption reads, "Have you been a dad today?"

This one, simple thing provokes an enormous amount of thoughts and emotions out of me.

I suppose the most obvious situation I think of is my situation, Adrian's situation.

Levi has not been a father today, he wasn't a father yesterday, and I've got a feeling he won't be being a father tomorrow.

This kind of thing, this totally 100% single parenting thing has felt at times, really lonely and incredibly isolating. I've cringed when people have asked about Adrian's father. I've spent countless hours trying to think of the perfect response to that question, yet, there really isn't one.

But today I'm sitting here thinking to myself that if they've got a billboard on the highway asking men if they've been a father today, well then, I must not be as alone as I feel.

I wonder if it's done any good.

I wonder if a man has driven by that and thought to himself, I should be more of a father.

I wonder how Levi would feel if he drove past it.

My guess is that he would be underwhelmed.

We haven't spoken in a while, Levi and I. It's been peaceful that way but also really sad. It's as if I've finally accepted that he won't be Adrian's father, no matter how hard I try.

I guess I'm glad I've accepted it, but there is something about that acceptance that feels really shitty. Really final.

I wonder if they have billboards like these in Los Angeles.

I feel like putting on my feetie pajamas at 5 o'clock. I know this happens every year when it begins getting dark early, but this year I can't take it any more. I am fighting back! Anything not to be on the couch for hours in between hustling back and forth to the refrigerator.

I need to suck up the daylight whenever I can so I have been forcing myself to get out. Mostly I try and make it to the gym because someone shrunk all the clothes in my closet.

To amuse myself I have been taking all the different kinds of classes they offer. Spin, pilates, kickboxing, body conditioning, etc. Monday night was boxing. I didn't notice I was the oldest person there until about half-way through. My chest was heaving and I was wondering if anyone in the gym had medical knowledge. What the heck was I thinking? After jumping rope, doing pushups on a hard wood floor, and completely flattening my manicure inside my boxing gloves on a punching bag, I had no idea if I would ever see darkness again...I was praying I could get back outside to the dark parking lot.

Too proud to flee, and with raccoon mascara eyes, I really hoped I wouldn't become a casualty. What's too much for a woman my age? Is there an age limit on boxing? Anyway, I made it through, high fived the 20 year olds on the way out and will continue to fight (box) getting SAD this year. SAD being Seasonal Affective Disorder. Lack of sunlight causes serious depression in many people. Figure out how to fight back at it if you are one of them. Maybe you should be the gloved one next?

My dad and stepmom met Mike last spring, and they said they liked him, but, really, what else would they say? Since they visited my sister last week, I figured I could check in with her and make sure.

So I checked. And, yes, they do. But...

"They think you're getting married," my sister said.

"What?" I squawked.

This is me we're talking about. Put aside that whole not wanting to get married again — this relationship's barely a year old! We haven't even lived in the same city yet! We're not even ready to live together! Plus that whole my-divorce-isn't-even-freaking-final-yet thing.

I casually mentioned this.

"I know, I know," she said. "But Dad thinks so, because you're coming to visit me."

Since Mike and I will be spending Christmas on the East Coast, part of our travel plan involves stopping in Boston to see my sister.

"SO?" I asked.

"Well, when I said you were both coming, he got all thoughtful. You're at his place, then Mike's parents', then here. He said maybe you were making ‘the family rounds.' ‘She must have something to announce!' he said."

"Don't worry," she said hastily, as I started sputtering. "I set him straight."

"But, but...how could he possibly think that?  Doesn't he know me at all?"

"Please," my sister said, "this is our dad. He asked me my senior year of college if my boyfriend and I were pinned. His world is a different place than ours."

Thank God their conversation happened. Otherwise, Thanksgiving might have been awkward, without me even realizing. 

If my editor at First Wives World one day decides to decrease my word limit all the way down to one, no problem. I could still convey my feelings about my marriage. In a word: meh. Rob drinks too much — meh. We don't have sex — meh. Now Rob is turning things around — meh. Life ekes on, and it's hard for me to muster anything other than indifference over my lackluster marriage.

Indeed, sometimes I wonder if the only reaction my posts about my endless indecision elicit is a big "meh" from readers.

There was never a wife so wishy-washy. It's not without justification entirely — my husband was indifferent to my needs and feelings for the first few years of marriage — but it's embarrassing nonetheless. Some days I wonder what's wrong with me.

So I had to laugh today when I read that the powers that be (in this case, HarperCollins, publisher of the Collins English Dictionary) legitimized the expression. Yep, "meh" is in the dictionary. (So is "yep," by the way.)

When I read it I thought of our honeymoon. (I believe we had sex once the entire week — and that includes our wedding night. I should have known then to expect trouble ahead.)

Our lakeside cabin came replete with a fireplace, canoe...and one fluffy orange cat as neighbor. We laughed whenever Buttercup came around. "Meh...meh...meh," she cried at the porch door.

We thought it was adorable that she couldn't muster a complete "meow." But now I have to wonder, were our little friend's pleas a warning? Maybe she knew something we would remain in denial about for years. Smart cat. 

I have to fess up. My secret is not much of a surprise, I'm sure, which hardly makes it a secret, but still I'll feel better straight out saying it. I want my apartment back.

Hold on, now. I'm not saying I want to leave Sam again. That's not it. And I'm not saying I don't want to live with Sam anymore. That's not it either.

I do want to live with him, just not all the time. I do not want to live with anyone all the time.

Maybe this makes me a loser, but it's the truth, so I'm saying it.

I spent all morning re-arranging my office and you know what? In the end I realized creating what I want there is impossible. No matter how many ways I move the furniture, it's all still in that one room, in that one house where we all live. All of us. Together. All the time.

Here's my fantasy: Sam and I get an apartment a few blocks from our house, and we furnish it with the leftover stuff we didn't sell in the garage sale we never had after we moved back in together.

I stay at the apartment a couple nights a week, he stays at the apartment a couple nights a week (if he wants) and three or four nights a week we all stay together, one big happy, nuclear family, at the house.

The girls have each parent five nights a week and two parents about half the time.

Before we separated I'd never lived alone, had no clue how amazing, how liberating, solitude can be.

We have all these ideas about how marriages and families should look, but the reality is parenting small children is brutal. Many of our families are fragmented, parceled out across the country. Thousands of miles apart.

There's no reprieve coming from grandparents, aunts and uncles, or older cousins. No one to take the kids for a couple nights or a couple hours. No villages to raise our children. Our therapist is always asking what we can do to create more space for ourselves.