Speaking of personal growth, here we go. Rob and I are heading to the Kripalu Center in western Massachusetts for a weekend of yoga and meditation. While I wasn't willing to do a workshop specifically for couples, our time there will no doubt bring transformation of some sort. Everyone who goes comes back changed.

I'm already dreading it, which is weird, because I'm a yogi who usually welcomes the opportunity to study with new teachers. I love how the steadiness and equanimity cultivated on the yoga mat make meeting life's challenges off the mat easier, and how each teacher brings unique insight to that process. 

But I have big resistance toward growth with Rob. I guess that's what I was getting at in my last post. If you can muster enough compassion and forgiveness for a difficult or mismatched partner to get over your most serious conflicts, does that mean you have rendered moot the reasons you should not be together, end of story? 

Can you forgive your way out of marital strife and into martial bliss? 

Sure, but my question is: Is that the ONLY path? It's the only one any therapist has seen fit to send me down, and that has been bugging me. How about forgiving but still breaking up anyway? What about those couples who are like best friends and divorce without an ounce of acrimony? (Forget Date my Ex: Jo and Slade. There really are couples like this out there, right?)

That seems more like the path before me, though readers of my blog know I'm dragging my feet, too attached to my cozy life, fearful of separation.

I'll be back next week. Hopefully the Kripalu Center will be fantastic. I'll take the advice of a friend who said to have fun, just don't drink the Kool-Aid. 

I have back problems that sometimes spread up into my neck, and it gets really painful. I have two young children who I can't lift and a bunch of housework that doesn't get done because it hurts to lift stuff. Thank God I have a job I can do while sitting and not moving.

Luckily for me, the pain comes and goes and with the help of my chiropractor/massage therapist/sleepy meds I muddle through. I don't spend all my time in pain, but when it does hit I'm pretty useless.

My back pain was in full force the other day, so I was happy to finally make it to the evening and lay down to go to sleep. My husband was already in bed so we chatted a little. He asked me how my back was feeling (code for "Can we have sex?") and I replied that it hurt pretty bad (code for "Please don't make me do that right now").

"You know," I said, "maybe I should get a pillow like yours." He has one of those pillows to keep the back and neck aligned. The thought occurs to me that maybe we can switch pillows for the night and in the morning I can go buy my own. He doesn't have back problems, and it would be great to try something — anything — to make my back feel better.

Before I can propose the idea he replies with, "Yeah, maybe you should get one," and then rolls over on his side to go to sleep. He's done with me. I can't offer him what he wants, so that's that.

Years ago he would have thought about switching pillows long before I did. He would have gone to great lengths to help me get comfortable. I laid there thinking about what a different man he is now, but then the thought occurred to me that maybe he was thinking the same thing; after all, when I was 25 years old I didn't have back problems and didn't have to deny sex because of my aches and pains.

Two months into the school year and every week Roxie's homework is due on Friday. She gets these four-page packets on Monday, has all week to work them. This is the routine. It does not change.

Ten-word spelling list, journal page, math page, reading log, and a page to practice her 10 spelling words. Never mind that I think this is a ridiculous amount of work for a first grader.

Never mind that Roxie has visual processing stuff — like everyone in my family has processing stuff — and it makes writing a bear for her. This week she did so much by Tuesday, I gave her Wednesday afternoon off.

Plenty of time, and not much to finish with Sam Thursday night.

Accept they didn't.

Maybe this should not infuriate me. We do this every single week, this homework routine. It does not change.

Sam and I work with her 50-50. I told him Wednesday exactly what needed to be done Thursday. I get home late Thursday night, kids are in bed and it still needs to be done.

I want to be furious with him, but I remember something. Sam has an auditory processing disorder. He does not learn by ear and he does not retain information given verbally — he does not think this is true. But it is.

Most of his family is this way. I've never sat at a quieter dinner table.

And here's impact of learning/processing differences on a relationship — my relationship. Because me, I'm just the opposite. Just like Roxie. My ears are everything.

How I understand the world is conversation and I need lots of it to thrive. Reading is tedious, I'm slow and remember almost nothing.

Sam knows the world with his eyes, it's all visual. The way I get little from a book and don't remember it anyway, that's what conversation is for Sam.

I know these things. If I don't write it down for Sam he will not remember. It's completely counter intuitive to me though, so I forget. And I'm not angry with him, but...

Drinking to the point of poisoning while playing computer games — that's Rob's weapon of choice. He wounds himself and points the finger at me. I don't pay enough attention, he told our therapist. And she has all the sympathy in the world for him. How nice.

After a whopping near-death episode last spring he stopped drinking for two months to examine his relationship to alcohol, and when he started again he put rules in place: He'd have no more than two drinks per day, and do that no more than two times per week.

That went really well for him. His memory and response time in conversation improved, and he seemed more confident. Then I went out to the Madonna concert last week and he retaliated. (It always happens when I go out with friends or leave town on business for a day or so, leaving him alone.)

Our therapist agreed with my hastily developed strategy to react to his recent setback with no reaction. I shouldn't admonish him, but I also can't take blame or be the one to make him feel better after he acts out.

Soon I leave again for upstate NY to take care of my ailing father for a few days. (Rob didn't think coming with me was worth sacrificing a few days of vacation time. Huh. Noted.)

I wonder what Rob will do while I'm away? Will he get drunk and play video games? If he did, it would put me closer to the door, that's for sure. I'm just not attracted to that behavior. Blame me? And our bond isn't strong enough for it to be worth putting up with.

But if I'm not supposed to discuss his drinking drama with him, how do I make clear to him those consequences? Any advice?

I have one black hair that grows on my neck. Whenever I notice it coming in I pluck it using tweezers, but it always comes back. It annoys me to no end. I would go get electrolysis if it wasn't just one stinking hair.

Sometimes I forget to check for the hair, but then I'll be sitting there minding my own business and my hand will land on my neck and there's the hair again. It's my recurring reminder that I'm not the same gal in my early twenties who snared a husband and had my whole life ahead of me. No, I'm in my mid-thirties with two kids, a mortgage, and a marriage that runs hot and cold. Wait, no, scratch that...a marriage that runs lukewarm and cold. 

After all, this neck hair was nowhere to be found when I was younger. I never had to tweeze neck hair before heading out to dance clubs with my friends. When I bought my first car I'm pretty sure there wasn't a black hair residing on my neck. When my husband and I went out on our first date there sure as heck wasn't a dark hair nestled under my turtleneck.

I'm a different woman now. I can't go back to how things were before I got married or before I had kids. It's not like my contemplating divorce has anything to do with wanting to reclaim my past life — sans unattractive neck hair — but instead it has more to do with reclaiming myself. I want to feel sure about where I am in life. I want to live a day without wondering if my relationship is the thing that makes me feel so incredibly uncomfortable and helpless.

Yeah, I'm older now than when I was last single. I'm in a completely different stage of life. The younger, no-hair-on-the-neck me would probably think that the present version of me is pretty lame. Hey, if you aren't happy in a relationship, you just move on, right? 

My husband and I try to trade off parenting duties on weekend mornings to sleep in, since neither one of us gets to sleep past 6:00 or so during the week.

I'll take one day and he'll take the other, so one of us will get up with the kids while the other will sleep until 8:00 or 8:30. It's not the "sleeping in" we did before kids came along, but it's better than nothing.

Friday night I asked my husband, "Do you want to sleep in tomorrow or Sunday?"

He said, "It doesn't matter to me."

I say, "Okay, I'll take tomorrow and you can take Sunday." He agreed, I headed to bed, and then morning came. Our son is calling, "Daddy! Daddy!" and I remember thinking to myself about how fortunate it was that he was calling for Daddy since it was my turn to sleep in.

It isn't long, though, before I wake back up because my husband is scolding my son. He's telling him something about how he better not go into the living room just to lay back down on the couch because if he wants to sleep he can stay in his bed.

I think to myself, "Okay, fair enough I guess..." but seeing as my son isn't even out of bed yet I don't really understand the pre-scolding.

Ten minutes later I hear my husband call to my son, "Breakfast!" My son, down in the playroom, replies that he's going to finish looking at his book. My husband shouts, "Get up here now!" and I hear him stomp down the stairs to collect our son.

This is the point when I got out of bed (our daughter did too because Daddy's shouting woke her up) and as I walked into the hallway my husband was carrying our son up the stairs. My son was squirming and crying, and my husband had a look on his face like he's ready to lose it.

If life is a journey, it's no weekend jaunt to the beach. It's an around-the-world expedition riddled with dangerous passages and course corrections.

My marriage is a journey, unfortunately quite a rough one of late. My relationship to my ailing father and my siblings who also help take care of him is always under construction.

Like many people, I also grapple with work-life balance: how much of myself do I put into my job or even any given project, and how much do I hold in reserve?

I've added another journey. Crazy, right? But stick with me...this one might be worth the added trouble.

I've embarked on a six-month yoga teacher training, and it's intense. The amount and level of physical, academic, and emotional study only seems to grow, week to week. At one point early on I said to a classmate that this might not have been the right time to engage in such a difficult program. Then we started our course of yogic philosophy.

Now I'm chartering more twists and turns in my mind than on the mat. While the training is physically challenging, this journey goes within, and the steadiness of mind I'm building benefits every part of my life.

So this one's a staycation. And there couldn't be a better time for it.

It's 4 AM and the pillow wrapped half-way around my head is insulation from the snores across the bed. Every night together is like this and I just want it to stop. Steals my nights, that noise.

Sharing a bed again, a room, with someone takes big recalibration. We're not living in one house together yet, but half the week Sam and I stay in one place.

I try to fall asleep first, get deep into REM before the rumbling starts because I remember something now. It's not easy to share my sleeping space. Sam's snores engine-loud; you can hear it down the hall.

I used to wonder why a married couple would ever want separate bedrooms. It seemed to me like sleeping separately was a tell tale sign of T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

We're sold a packaged picture of how happily ever after should look, and it never has more than one bed.

Why is it no one ever tells you about the importance of space before a first marriage? Nobody ever says while you are busy building a life together, don't forget to develop an equally sound life of your own so you maintain a strong sense of self.

These nights together are good practice, just the way sitting in a therapist's office every week hashing out the "how's this going to work" is good practice. Going back into this marriage a second time after two years on my own is, I guess, like preparing for any second marriage. You have the benefit of practice and wisdom and experience that were impossible the first go around.

You have the perspective of age and knowing yourself and your expectations and your limits in way that only comes with years. Lessons hard won and learned slow.

And after two years apart I know this: I like sleeping in my own bed by my own self without a pillow wrapped around my head to dull the snoring. Sex is one thing, but sleep? That's another, and I don't get much of it sharing a bed.

Every time Sam and I walk into a potential rental house, the muscles in my body clench. Instant tension under my skin. And I'm aware of this.

There's that saying: The body doesn't lie. And a friend once told me the body is the brain, you can't separate them out. I spun for months on that one, trying dissect the paradox of its truth.

But I get it.

When I have a rough day with my kids, when my patience is short and every touch torture, it's my body making life so hard. When my body is tense it has a strangle hold on my brain. My mood is short and ugly. When I'm relaxed, anything goes and I can go with anything.

Maybe it's the kids that trigger these house hunting freeze-ups. The way an empty house brings on instant off-the-wall insanity and they're moving loud and fast and relentlessly.

It was like that when I looked at my little post-separation apartment with Lila, too. My mellow 22-month-old ran screaming around the hardwoods. The moment we walked out my sweet quiet baby was back.

Could be the kids I'm reacting to, too. Could be the reinvention of my marriage with Sam.

Right now my biggest fear is this big thinking brain of mine with its fat-mouth ego could have an agenda totally at odds with the rest of me. The whole of me. And if I'm not careful I'll make a wrong turn back into oblivion.

After 10 years of marriage and another two of separation, it seems like this whole stay-or-go thing should be clear. Especially since I've agreed to stay.

My brain says nobody loves you like he does, baby. And nobody will ever love your kids that way either. When I'm quiet I can hear my soul whisper in agreement.

So why is it that my shoulder is rock-knotted and I can't turn my head?

A year ago I was on my way out the door, ready to end a relationship that had deteriorated into more of a roommate situation than a happy marriage.

A year ago I was, shall we say, a few pounds lighter. I realized this just the other day when I could no longer ignore how tight my clothes were feeling lately. I worked up the courage to weigh myself and yep...I had packed on 20 pounds.

I guess I could see this coming. My work schedule has been really hectic so I can't make it to the gym as much as I would like, but 20 pounds? Yikes! I already needed to lose a little, but now I have to lose a few — plus 20. That's no fun.

It was a big wakeup call. I don't take care of myself like I should, or at least I haven't been in this last year since I made the attempt to leave my husband and then wound up staying. Maybe I'm sabotaging myself, or maybe I just don't think I'm worth the effort anymore.

By the way, in case you're wondering, yes...I do analyze everything.

There's a theory that people gain weight intentionally — yet subconsciously — because they are trying to distance themselves from other people. I guess this makes sense. I stayed, but we certainly aren't as close as we once were. I still think about leaving every day. Maybe my weight gain is my subconscious effort to distance myself further from him. Maybe I'm trying to make him leave me.

Or maybe I just need to go the gym more.