Today is 250 days since we left New York, so this is my 250th blog entry!
Last night, we didn’t go to bed till very late – at least very late for us. We didn’t get home until after midnight (we were out six hours with Steffie and Dave!), and then we stayed up watching TV and I was blogging until almost 2:00am. So, it was no surprise that we slept until 11:00am this morning.
We gathered all the dirty clothes we had, because Eric wanted to do laundry while I took Steffie’s 2-hour Restorative Yoga class. There's a laundry in the hotel, but they were re-doing the floor, so he had to go to a laundromat. He dropped me off at 1:30pm. The class was really great. I hadn’t taken yoga since we left NY, so I was pretty stiff, but the class was all about staying in a position for 5-15 minutes, using blocks, blankets, small pillows and even lavender-scented eye pillows to relax and restore you. It was fantastic!
As we were leaving the beautiful complex where the yoga studio is located, I saw this image and immediately recognized it. I took it as a good sign!
Eric was waiting outside at 3:30pm and we were both starving, so we went nearby to a PANERA BREAD for soup and sandwich. I got a ½ veggie sandwich and tomato soup and Eric got a ½ chicken salad sandwich with broccoli cheddar soup. Delicious and also very restorative!!
After that, we decided to drive to South End, a neighborhood Steffie had recommended to us as a possible place to live. It’s very close to the city – in fact, we had to drive through part of the city in order to get there. It seems to be the decorating section of the city, because there were tons of marble, granite, kitchen, floral, fabric, interior design, rug and other businesses for either building or decorating your home.
We drove through the industrial section and then found the residential neighborhood, which was very nice. They seem to be building a lot of new condos, or apartment buildings, but we didn’t see a lot of apartments. It’s hard to know where to drive, because the area is pretty big, and I’m sure we didn’t see it all.
On the way back we discussed what we had seen, and how we felt about Charlotte. We’ve heard that there’s a lot of crime here, and they seem to be very easy on criminals – releasing them again, and again, and again – for years, so that they are career criminals. We read an article about a guy who has been arrested 40 times! In NY he’d be put away for good, but here they just keep letting him back on the street.
We read that there are car jackings, home robberies, muggings – all the things you’d expect to find in a big city, which Charlotte is – but it’s so unexpected when the city looks so clean, pristine and beautiful! That’s one thing that bothered us both a lot. Eric watched a lot of news in San Diego and always pointed out every crime, making it seem like the most crime-ridden place in the country, which of course it’s not. I know there’s probably no big city in the country where there’s no crime, but it’s scary to think about. Part of the problem is that when they built all the new buildings a lot of people were displaced – people who didn’t find a great place to live or work, so they turned to crime. It’s not right, but it’s certainly understandable. Too many people are holding the good-paying jobs and living in the nice neighborhoods and there are lots of people who can’t afford the nice neighborhoods and aren’t qualified for the high-paying jobs. There are only so many low-paying jobs, so people turn to crime.
Meanwhile, I thought that being in North Carolina was going to make a big change in Eric, but it really hasn’t at all. Some of my friends have warned me that it’s not San Diego that is depressing Eric. They say Eric is just depressed. I wanted to believe that it was the bad mountain biking that was depressing him, even though he hated EVERYTHING about San Diego – and California, in general. His hatred of San Diego didn’t make sense, but I believed that getting him out of that environment and into an environment he claims to love would make him happy.
I was hoping my friends were wrong – that being surrounded by beautiful trees, forests, greenery and blooming spring flowers would make him happier, but it really hasn’t. Even when he rode his bike in Brevard (outside Asheville), it didn’t really make him happy.
I don’t know why I expected him to snap out of his depression because he changed his environment, but it’s probably because HE kept saying all he needed was to get out of SD. I believed that the minute he saw the forest he’d be skipping happily around Charlotte. Am I the eternal optimist or what?
I’m hanging in there, and hoping we will be able to work together to figure out what to do. I’m not going to say I don’t want to give up sometimes, because I feel like I’ve done everything I can think of to help him, but I won’t give up on him, or us. I’ll keep working to figure out what will make us both happy. I do have to tell you that it’s the love and support of my friends and family that has helped me hang in there. I just want you all to know that.
Anyway, by the time we got back from South End it was after 6:00pm. We both took a fast nap and then we ordered in from an Italian restaurant and both ate too much. We shared an eggplant parmigiana, which came with garlic knots, spaghetti and a Caesar salad.
After dinner Eric said, “I really do like this place. I think we could be happy here.” That meant a lot to me, because he doesn’t express himself very much and – when he does – it’s usually something negative. That really brings me down, so I was really glad he said that. It gives me hope!
We are going to a nearby place tomorrow, so Eric can rent a mountain bike and have a ride in Charlotte. The place is called U.S. National Whitewater Center, where they have rock climbing, mountain biking, kayaking, and white water rafting. This place is having the 2008 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Whitewater Slalom in 2 weeks. They rent bikes for 2 hours, and the woman said there are lots of things to do and see, so I will go with him and wait while he rides. Maybe there’ll be a place for me to plug in the computer! Otherwise, I’ll go rock climbing (yeah, right!).