Turns out, I AM Don Draper. And a teenage diary author.

Dear friends,

Tuesday night as Mr. Mom and I were riding in the car, he told me how much he liked that day’s post about Kate. I smiled and said I noticed that he had shared it with his friends on Facebook, which is rare for him.

Then he told me a long story I won’t go into here about some of his Facebook friends and their behavior, which drives him nuts — the bottom line being that he finds it distasteful to engage in showy promotion or affection of spouses while social networking.

I get it. Doesn’t hurt my feelings. (Although I will note that all writers crave the praise of their loved ones more than any other reader.)

Anyway, I was surprised to notice on my Facebook page the very next day that he “liked” my post titled Incarnation. So I asked him about it because, you know, we just talked about his public restraint and here he is liking my post two days in a row. I wondered if he found my prose especially lyrical, my imagery particularly evocative, my phrasing unusually sublime.

Joan: So what was it you liked about my post? You must have considered it special since you hit “like” a day after you told me how you try to refrain from that.

Mr. Mom: I enjoyed how introspective it was and I thought you were really insightful. I mean, a lot of your posts read like “what I did on my summer vacation” diary entries. But in this one, you really seemed to have a clear view of yourself, which is rare for most people. Especially the part about Don Draper. I haven’t watched the show, but you seem to be a lot like him, the way he recreates himself at everyone’s expense. You’re always remaking your life and putting the rest of us through the paces along the way.

Joan: <walks from the master bedroom to her closet because, really, she’s heard enough to get the gist of it>

Mr. Mom: <undeterred by his wife’s absence, keeps talking, only louder> I mean, one day you’re a vegetarian and everybody in the family is eating vegetables. The next day you’re Macrobiotic and everybody’s eating Miso soup. Or you’re on a running kick, or a redecorating kick, or a graduate school kick — whatever it is, you’re putting the rest of us through the paces to keep up with your odyssey.

Joan: <moving heavy things in the closet in an attempt to make noise and drown out her literary and existential critic>

Mr. Mom: So I just thought you really hit the nail on the head.

Well.

Here’s to seeing yourself clearly.

With gratitude {for brutal honesty of all varieties including self-imposed and conjugal},

Joan, but you can call me Jo-Don

He said. She said.

Dear friends,

It rained at our place yesterday. Big ol’ buckets of rain poured down for most of the day, including just as Mr. Mom and I were falling asleep. Under the steady drum of rain on our roof in a house that was dark and otherwise still, here’s the conversation we had.

Mr. Mom:  I forgot to tell you. When I was driving to Wichita earlier this week, I drove through the worst rain ever. I could barely see the road and had to slow way down. I’ve never driven through rain that hard.

Joan: That’s not true.

Mr. Mom: What do you mean?

Joan: It’s not the worst rain ever. I was with you when you drove through the worst rain ever — that night we drove from Tulsa to Nowata and I was so scared and made us pull over. Remember? It was raining so hard the water started pouring through the seals of the side windows.

Mr. Mom: That was a function of the windows in that crappy ol’ Ram Charger and the wind, not the rain.

Joan: Not true! When we pulled over, it was raining so hard we couldn’t even see our hood ornament — and the rain was so heavy that RAIN WAS POURING IN our windows.

Mr. Mom: <chuckling> Shut up!

Joan: No! You’re wrong, and you’re trying to blame the windows when in fact it was the heaviest rain you’ve ever been in.

Mr. Mom: <chuckling> Oh, so you’re saying the wind wasn’t a factor?

Joan: The wind WAS a factor.

<Pause>

Joan: But it was still the heaviest rain ever.

With gratitude {for a pillow partner that lets me win all the important arguments},

Joan, who is the Master of Trivial Pursuit in her own life

You can’t take the treadmill to Joyland.

Dear friends,

Wednesday night as Mr. Mom and I were about to drift off to sleep, he squeezed my hand and whispered “Did you find your joy today?”

We both snickered, and I admitted that given a taxing day at the office, I hadn’t even looked for it.  We talked about the thoughtful comments made by readers and the elements of your suggestions that resonated with us.  Finally he said, “Sometimes I think you have to stop thinking and start doing.”

His words echoed many of your comments, which suggested I get busy — responding to my creative urges, rolling out the yoga mat, or even cutting loose and dancing in the kitchen. Simple things, all. But incredibly uplifting things, too, if one does them consciously.

But let me tell you — the conscious part is not so simple.

Haven’t you ever felt like you were going through your days in a daze? Before we moved and I was still commuting two hours a day, there were times when the entire drive would go by and I’d have no memory of it. It might sound like a convenient mental trick, but there were instances when I’d pull into my driveway and “wake up” without any memory of the traffic or the landmarks (or, frankly, of any brain activity) of the prior 60 minutes. The feeling frightened me so badly that sometimes I would feel myself shaking as I pulled into the garage. And it convinced me I had to get rid of the commute.

But getting rid of the commute doesn’t mean I got off the treadmill. And by treadmill, I mean the automatic-pilot state, the sleepwalking trap that all adults but especially working mothers can fall into. I’ve tried very hard since I “remade” my life 10 months ago to stay off the treadmill.  But the truth is that some days I’m more conscious than others. (We humans are all a damn DIY project, aren’t we?)

When I launched this site on a whim in January, I chose the tagline “daily meditations of a mindful mother” for two reasons. First, because I needed a written promise to motivate me to blog daily (and blogging is my chosen method for cultivating gratitude). And, second, because I aspire to be mindful (though I so often am not). Thus, the daily part and the mindful part were at the center of my New Year’s resolution. And yet here I am, in early February, in a self-inflicted stupor wherein I whine publicly about how “I have no joy!”

So, I’m going to stop whining and start doing.  Do I know what my doing will consist of? Heck no! But whatever I do, I’m going to follow this advice:

As you walk, cultivate a sense of ease. There’s no hurry to get anywhere, no destination to reach. You’re just walking. This is a good instruction: just walk. As you walk, as you let go of the desire to get somewhere, you begin to sense the joy in simply walking, in being in the present moment. You begin to comprehend the preciousness of each step. It’s an extraordinarily precious experience to walk on this earth. —Peter Doobinin (from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)

Don’t worry . . . I’ll report in and let you know how it goes. Because you can bet when I find some joy I’m going to spread it around.

With gratitude {for a husband who cares enough to ask about his wife’s joy and friends with much-needed perspective},

Joan, who wrote this late Thursday night in a hotel room while cultivating a little TGIF-joy at the thought of going home for the weekend

Debunking the 50-50 rule.

Dear Friends,

Last night Mr. Mom and I were in the bathroom together for our nightly ritual of teeth-brushing and other pre-bed preparations. As we finished up and walked toward our bed, Mr. Mom said: Oh . . . I’ll be right back. I think Kate forgot the leftovers on the counter and I’ve got to put the food away.

I said: Okay. I’ve got to crawl into to bed now and get really comfy and warm.

And you know what Mr. Mom did? He laughed. He laughed out loud as he walked out of the room to take care of what is typically Kate’s responsibility but became his on this evening because his daughter wasn’t feeling well and it’s a cinch his wife didn’t think of it.

As I crawled into bed and got busy getting really comfy and warm while he took care of the last of the nightly chores, I thought about the kind of man it takes to not only head to the kitchen while his wife goes to bed, but also the kind of man who laughs when his wife makes a joke about it.

Let me tell you — it takes a man who knows there’s no such thing as the 50-50 rule.

There’s an epidemic of working mothers who spend a lot of time contemplating the 50-50 rule. I know this because the women talk about it endlessly.  And in case you’ve haven’t heard of the 50-50 rule, it’s what I call the myth that married couples, especially working parents, should share “the burden” equally.

It doesn’t matter how you define “burden.” Housework, shopping, laundry, financial planning, child-rearing, pet care, lawn maintenance –  these are all part of the never-ending list of chores every married couple has to face and, more importantly, to negotiate responsibility and accountability for.

A woman I know recently got divorced over the 50-50 rule. Or so said her husband, who felt that his wife wasn’t pulling her fair share (whatever “fair” is). Another woman I know told me not long ago that she and her husband had a “come to Jesus” meeting about his failure to appropriately pitch in.

I mentioned the latter situation to Mr. Mom because the woman is a mutual friend.  After I told him the long version of the story, he said: You know, there’s no relationship that’s ever 50-50. Sometimes it’s 60-40 and sometimes it’s 70-30 and sometimes it switches the other direction 80-20. At any given time, somebody’s always giving more than the other person and somebody else is taking more. It’s never equal.

I thought about this for a minute because – given our long established roles with me as the earner and Mr. Mom as the caregiver/household manager – I hadn’t contemplated equality in a very long time.

Before I could respond, he added: It’s like this. In every relationship, somebody is the quarterback and somebody is the blocker. And, sometimes you’re just the trainer that tapes all the ankles. After all, somebody has to tape ankles. I don’t understand why couples waste so much time calculating and worrying over the percentages.

So now it’s obvious how I’ve managed to stay married for 20 years.   Choice is everything and I picked a good one, even though at the time I wasn’t smart enough to know it; I just knew I was in love.

But it does explain why my friend, the one who thought her husband needed a reckoning, later said to me: “You know, Joan, you and Mr. Mom seem to have the most natural partnership of any couple I know. It just seems like you guys have it all figured out.”

I’d like to think there’s something in this world I’ve figured out but, like always, I chalk it up to the man who’s a whiz at math but has never bothered counting who’s ahead.

With gratitude {for the man whose bedside manner while taping ankles is exceptional},

Joan, who thinks she got a bargain when she agreed to bring home the bacon in this deal

PS: I claim no special knowledge of human psychology or the path to marital happiness. And I understand that relationships are personal and complex and not easily condensed into tidy blog-advice packages, so you won’t hurt my feelings if you think I don’t “get” you or your situation. But I do know this: failure to keep a tally is the key to success in most things, including marriage, but also jobs and friendships and child-rearing and neighborliness and every other endeavor where it is more blessed to give than receive.