I'm afraid of drifting.

There's this meditation exercise where you picture yourself holding a balloon and floating up with it — out of your chair, your living room, your apartment — then gently floating along over your city. You picture this and become Calm and Peaceful.

I don't know if it's the height thing (I'm afraid of them), the relaxing thing (I'm not good at it), or merely the fact that the inside of my head is a ridiculous place, but I just couldn't do it.

I got out of the apartment okay, but once I got to the power lines, I worried. If I fell, I'd get hurt. This is your imagination, I reminded myself. You won't fall. It's pretend. I floated higher.

Then I thought about how I was up very high with only a balloon, and, really, how high can a balloon go before it pops? 

SHUT UP, I told my brain. But it wouldn't. Finally, I strapped on an imaginary parachute. I am now safe. I have a parachute. I can float about without fear of falling. I am Calm and Peaceful. But...

A balloon string — wouldn't that be cutting into my hand about now?

I replaced the string with a comfy leather strap.

Wouldn't my shoulder start to pull? What if it dislocates?

Eventually, I ended up in a deck chair, supported so it couldn't tip backwards, with a hot air balloon type contraption and a safety rail before I gave up and watched a couple of Frasier reruns. So much for meditation.

Floating is frightening. Heights are frightening. Hanging there, unsupported, nothing there to catch me — it's scary enough that I can't even do it in my head.

There's a metaphor in here somewhere, I'm pretty sure.  

Knowing I'm running the risk of harping about my sex dry spell too much, I've decided not to write about it again until something gives. That is, starting right after this post — I just couldn't shut it down without passing along these nuggets of hilarious wisdom from a couple of good friends!

One says regular sex is like going to the gym: You know it's good for you, you should go, you always like it when you get there, and you feel great afterward. It just takes a lot of effort to get out the door...particularly if you haven't been there in a while.

Another points out: "There are so many external and internal expectations about sex that can doom it. Why can't we just unscrew our heads and screw!" 

Ah, friends. The best ones know when (and about what!) we could use a chuckle.

Rob is away tonight. He's undergoing a sleep study in hopes of uncovering why he wakes so abruptly in fear at night. Poor guy, he's probably sick in the head from lack of sex!

Which reminds me: A reader asked what, when many men would go elsewhere for what they aren't getting, is Rob's deal? How can he manage to go so long without it? I've imagined the worse: he's getting it elsewhere (highly unlikely), prefers internet porn (could be), prefers MEN (I won't lie — it has occurred to me). I've asked him point blank, but he's infuriatingly evasive.

Okay, lots more to figure out, but no more writing about sex until I've had some!  

This was a busy whirl of a week with travel, flirtation, airport fantasies and lots and lots of moms. In 2008 Jennifer Kampmier founded www.IndyBabyExpo.com, after dumping her online dating biz, and falling in love with a baby — her own, of course.

Her baby fair is an extravaganza of merchandise for moms-to-be and new moms with tots. Even though my children are way into high school, Jennifer and I synced up over the whole Mamapalooza and Moms Who Rock phenomenon and decided to team up for Spring 2009 events. So I jetted out to meet her in person.

We connected right away. As we sat on her deck into the wee hours, with the Indiana moon hovering, we spilled our stories of men, marriage, online dating, babies and being women entrepreneurs.

Past midnight and way into drinks our stories came spilling out, and I knew I had found a kindred spirit. For someone in the mothering expo biz, Jenn has made independent choices that I admire and respect.

She's single by choice, and raising her 3-year-old son, Zane, on her own. Long term plans for her mean growing her business and perhaps ultimately moving to far off places so she and Zane could have a chance to experience other cultures.

I met and stayed with her family for the weekend, and got to chat with her delightful parents, who've been married for 36 years.

As self-described flower children in the late 70s, they bought a mobile home and moved their young family around America. Jenn is in her early 30s. I'm 51. Even though, technically, we're different generations, and our choices have led us down different paths, we had both read every single one of the same books on health, wealth, spirit and empowerment.

When our conversation got deep, our philosophies turned to alternative ways of thinking and being.

I'm sitting in the backyard the other night and it's late, past midnight, the house is dark and the full moon is one bright spot in the clouds. Crickets chirping and quiet all around them. The little white garden shed my girls have claimed as their one-room school house for playing "Mary and Laura" complete with bonnets and petticoats — lots of Little House going on at my house these days — and it hits me, I'm okay.

I'm okay.

More than that. I love my little house and my beautiful yard and I'm comfortable being here as a family of four again.

I keep searching for the reasons I shouldn't be. I don't know if the reasons I seek are for me or for everyone else. Not that anyone wants me to be miserable.

The thing is, I'm always feeling a little guilty about rebuilding my marriage, like somehow I betrayed everyone who stood by me while I pulled myself together and ripped my life apart a couple years ago.

My girlfriends heard the details, moment by excruciating moment, for three years before I left and they pooled their resources to help me when I finally arrived at that place where leaving is the only option.

They got me out. There was no leaving, would have been no leaving, without them.

So here I am again, back in. My friends are supportive and I am mostly happy.       

But, even now while Sam and I are in good grove and our biggest issues are temporarily dormant, I can't quit looking for what should be wrong.

After all these years, I'm not sure I know how to be okay with being okay.

Okay, I've got a new house for the animal family and me. Now: What to do with the old one? The plan is to ready it for sale or rent. I've talked with a couple of friends to see if they might want to buy it or maybe even rent it at a reduced rate just to keep it from standing empty.

And, my soon-to-be-ex Edgar has volunteered to rent it.

Edgar tells me I have to hang onto it. "That house is the only thing you have." Well, sort of.

I like to think of things like friends and family, years of experience in the kind of work I love, even my books and music as things I "have." But he's right. The old homestead is certainly my biggest material asset, even though its value has been dropping like a stone.

"This isn't the time to be selling your house," he told me.

I didn't buy the house as an investment, per se. I bought it 11 years ago because I'd always wanted a house, and needed a nice, quiet place to keep myself and my stuff. I kept it even when strangers approached me in the yard during the real estate boom and offered me several times what I paid. 

But they were offering only money. This is my home.

And though it is worth much, much less than it has been, I should still make a profit if I'm able to sell the place.

But that's a big If. I'd love to be able to rent it to Edgar and keep it. He does have a stable job, he knows the house's idiosyncrasies and might take better care of it than I have.

However, I also remember worrying, when he lived here, that he might set the place on fire during a drunken episode.

Typically, Ed is presenting himself as the solution to my problems, even though he says he can't afford the full mortgage payment. I'd have to pick up the shortfall. "But if you'd be willing to lose your house over a couple of hundred dollars a month," he said, "that's just stupid."

I'm a Democrat and my husband is a Republican. It's never been that big of a deal because we're both pretty moderate in our beliefs and we aren't really the kind of people to sit around debating for hours about the issues, so it was more of a cute thing we bragged about in our early years.

"I'm a Democrat," I would say and then look at my husband, "and he's a Republican." Then we'd snuggle and everyone would laugh about how two people could have a bipartisan relationship in peace but the Senate can't stop arguing. It was like a cool parlor trick.

My husband and I talked about who we will be voting for this year a little, but for the first time ever there was some tension in our conservation. I would say it actually bordered on a debate. He hinted that he might be open to voting for either candidate. 

I said we should watch the debates together and talk about the issues and all the other stuff people do when trying to decide on a candidate. I wound up watching the debates alone and then when my husband recently sent in an absentee ballot he announced he voted with his party.

I made a comment — jokingly — about how I was glad he voted for Palin to become president, and he exploded. "Just wait until you make your vote," he snapped, "and see what I say about your candidate."

Apparently we no longer joke about politics together. I wish I had received the memo warning me of such.

I'll be glad when the election is over. 

My birthday is Sunday.  Although I won't say how old I'm going to be, I will say that I'm not quite 30, but it's getting pretty damn close. I know it may sound silly, but the 30 mark is really freaking me out. I want to have accomplished something great by the time I reach that milestone.

Some of you may remember that for my birthday last year, I got to go to family court. What a joy.

The year before that, I had to practically beg my husband to celebrate with me. I recall him saying that he had a lot of work to do, and wasn't sure he could be home. I remember watching him outside, from our kitchen window, pace back and forth on the porch, talking on the phone. I remember when he came back inside and told me that he had "worked it out" so that he could stay with me.

Apparently, "stay with me" meant make me dinner and then leave.

It wasn't until months later that I found out the truth. There was no work, there was no working anything out. Levi was seeing another woman. Levi went to be with another woman...on my birthday.

So, the last bunch of birthdays have been pretty crappy.

I'd almost like to just let this one pass by quietly. Stay home, snuggle in and watch Desperate Housewives. My friends don't want to let that happen.

And the truth is, I don't really want that to happen either.

So, here's to a new year of Faith, literally and figuratively. Here's to better birthdays. Now that I think of it, I really do have a lot to celebrate!

Jake had a thing about giving me jewelry. In his head, this is What Husbands Did. If one had a Wife, one got her Nice Things.

No matter that the wife in questions said, "I don't really like jewelry." No matter that she said, "I don't like to wear jewelry." No matter that she said, "At the very least, please don't ever get me anything gold."

"Happy anniversary," he'd say. "I know you don't like gold. I know you never wear jewelry. But I got this for you anyway."

So, I have this jewelry box, and it's filled with things. Gold things, mostly. Expensive things. Things I never wear. Things I didn't want in the first place. Things I have no use for.

And yet — two years later — I still have them.

Why? Is it because dealing with the process of appraisal and sale will take some effort? Is it because just the idea of yet another errand dealing with this divorce exhausts me?

Or is it that the idea of losing those presents is hard? Because — even though they speak so much to Jake's lack of understanding of me, lack of interest in what I liked and cared about — they were still given out of love.

So much pain is left when a marriage ends that it's hard to look back at what was good and happy without those memories being tainted, somehow, by all the hurt.

This could be grad school tuition, here in this box. This could be a vacation, or a couple of the cross-country plane tickets I'm burning through these days.

What will it take to open it up and take some action?