So here I am, back where I started. As recently as six months ago, I would have laughed loudly at the suggestion that I'd ever find myself living again in the little city where I grew up. But, my script has flipped.

Underemployed in South Florida, and about to be divorced, I began to think it might be good to live someplace I could afford. I'd also have the support of family and friends and be able to provide the same for them.

Still, there's something about going back...

I try to keep in mind what my therapist, the Good Doctor (boy, do I miss her) said when I whined about returning here, as I said, "with my tail between my legs."

"If that's the way you choose to look at it," she said.

I am a little...embarrassed, I guess...not to have returned home in a blaze of glory, or at least in a fancy new car. That's the trouble with expectations. I'd gotten a great start in life and I was supposed to become all that and a bag of chips, as we used to say.

But at least I didn't come back battered and bruised, running from or dragging along my drunken husband. And, I'm not drunk myself.

So I'm available to spend time with my parents and those of my friends who live elsewhere, to visit the old folks in the hospital, to run their errands sometimes, maybe even to take them places in my 11-year-old car.

Which is more important: to look good or to do good?

I vote for the latter, especially since my actions are something I have control over, while I can't control what other people think of my looks. Perhaps after I've made myself useful here for a while, I'll relax a bit about who and where I am.

As for whoever's assessing me, I'll try to remember something I heard once: People who matter don't judge, and people who judge don't matter.  

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.

Welcome to my recipe for disaster. On Thanksgiving Day this year my daughter will be 21. I am trying to combine a milestone birthday, a holiday, the umpteenth anniversary of my father's death and a tentacled divorce. I can't even tell you the half of it because doing so here would compromise the privacy of people close to me. I'm leaning toward Jet Blue. I will focus instead on stuffing.

My favorite stuffing story was the year I decided to make the bird at my house and transport it to my late brother Stephen's home. People were not relaxed. I was never known as the turkey girl and I that year I was going to show them! 

Everyone at the table watched in awe as my mother pulled a plastic bag of innards out of the stuffing cavity. I can still hear my brother's hysteria. This year I'm at it again...shoot me.

For decades it was my mother's Italian egg stuffing recipe. A combination of, roughly, a dozen large eggs, a handful of grated Locatelli cheese, a handful of chopped fresh Italian parsley, enough plain bread crumbs to thicken the mix till it drips off a spoon and a little salt and pepper. This then blows up inside the turkey and is absolutely delicious.

My sister-in-law Susie started going with her sausage & chestnut stuffing and my stuffing allegiance is now challenged. Actually, I am open to stuffing suggestions. Got any?

There are the times, usually carefully chosen, when I feel I have to say something to my husband, even if it hurts. On the way home from a recent dinner party: "Honey, the Carters have been telling us since last fall that their son Justin has his heart set on Brown."

"They are calling in all their chits in hopes of getting the dorky kid in there," he says.

"So when you dis Brown, and say his choice of college doesn't really matter, well sweetie, it kind of brought the dinner party conversation to a dead halt.

"Did you notice? Brown seems very important to them. Maybe next time you could say, 'Brown — great school. Fingers and toes crossed for you!'"

That's when he will jam on the brakes a block from our house and call me elitist. And then he'll get defensive: "I'll say whatever I want to say."

"Honey," I respond, "let's just play the game. Even though the less-than-brilliant Justin will never get into Brown.

"Who are we to burst their bubble?

"This is not rocket science, honey. It's just a social grace. Can't you just play along?"

Things like this are minor irritants, taken one at a time. But if he thinks those things don't add up in a small town, he is mistaken. I point that out — again, because these are the people we have chosen to live among.

The town we picked, the street we claim as ours. With neighbors — flawed like the rest of us. It's our village.

All I am asking for is peace in the village. Where our kids, a few years down the road, will dream big, dream a bit beyond our means.

So I want him to quit embarrassing himself. Actually, to quit embarrassing us.

Rules: Keep it down to two glasses of wine.

Skip the tequila.

We can always get snarky about poor Justin on the ride home.

Living apart together... Living together apart.... There are all kinds of ways to make relationships work, whether they're relationships that involve love and affection or relationships built to sustain two people at lower costs than separate houses.

Here's a popular strategy that some couples use in Quebec: The kids get the house. The parents move out.

Of course, not at the same time, because that would leave small Wilbur and precious Joanie to tear up the family home in no time flat.

But what some couples who separate try in order to achieve the least amount of emotional trauma for children is a shared custody arrangement in which the parents are the ones to shift between houses, not the kids.

Here's how it works:

The parents shop for an apartment or second home that they feel they can afford. It has to be a location that both like and feel comfortable living in. They furnish the place and make it viable to live in. Each choose a room to be theirs and set up their personal effects.

Then, one week of two, one of the parents moves out of the main family home into this secondary location. The other parent stays in the family home with the kids. When the week is up, the parent that had moved out moves back into the family home, and the other parent gets a week-long break in the secondary home.

The exchange of household only requires that the parents pack a small bag of personal items. They already have a room set up in either home with clothes in both locations.

The benefits? The kids never have to leave the home they grew to love. They get to stay in one place without suffering an upheaval or leaving behind a house they feel good living in. The kids stay in one familiar location. There's no fear of the unknown, no leaving behind anything and no worries about the future.

A few months ago I read a Newsweek article written by a woman who was in the middle of a divorce. She and her husband had both come to the realization that the marriage wasn't going to work, so while they still remained friends they knew that divorce was inevitable.

Instead of splitting up the household goods, working out a custody arrangement for the kids, and then going their separate ways, they still lived together in the same house they bought as a married couple. They had separate bedrooms, but they still maintained the home concurrently. The kids knew the parents were divorcing at that eventually they would be split up into two households, but until the house sells they'll all stay together under one roof.

I remember thinking to myself as I read the article, "Is this feasible? Can two people who are divorcing share a house and not be freaked out the whole time?" I figured it must be an exceptional situation, and didn't give it much more thought until a friend recently told me about her neighbor who is doing the exact same thing. Apparently they're afraid to put the house on the market because of the current real estate environment, so they've set up separate bedrooms and they've already filed the divorce paperwork.

Does anyone else think this is weird?

If I filed for divorce I would not want to live in the same house as my husband. Maybe it's different for me because my husband absolutely does not want a divorce, so it would be weird to live with him and deal with the whole, "Are you sure you want to do this? Can't we work it out? How could you do this to me?" thing that I would probably get from him every single day. Not being able to be physically away from him would be bizarre, considering the circumstances.

Since the divorce (two and a half years ago) and in the last year, I have discovered something quite wonderful. It is that each and everything that we do is important. So, consequently, I am no longer in a rush. Seems I spent 12 years rushing, rushing, rushing to please, to prepare, to arrive on time, to make sure "they" were on time, to get things done. And it nearly killed me.

Today, I take pleasure in the smallest of things. I simply look at the job at hand and begin. I cut linings for my friend's drawers today. I did not over think it. I did not look at all the drawers and think, "Oh, my God, there are so many of them."

She gave me the assignment, and I poured myself into it. I sat in the sun at my "work" station, which was a bench on her deck. I sat on a cooler with wheels, and I had a razor blade and a block of wood, an ink pen and a tape measure to complete my work.

I sat and drank a Smirnoff lemonade thing and began the task at hand. I did not care if there were rolls and rolls of this shelf liner that needed to be measured and cut and that the dimensions had to be 19 ¼ for some and 8 ¾ for others. I spread the material and measured and marked and cut using a quarter round to hold down the liner. I ran my blade as close to the quarter round as I could, paying attention to the fact that I wanted the edges to be smooth and not ragged.

I accomplished my task.

When the kids spill Pepsi or milk. When my dog gets sick and throws upon my floor or when the kitchen pipe under the sink leaks and I have to stop my current task or effort to relax and must stoop, bend, twist, unscrew, wipe, I do it willingly and almost happily.

I am a grateful Samurai, today. A soldier with Krud Kutter and Lysol as my weapons.

"Rake over there!" My ex pointed to a patch about 100 feet from where I'd decided to amuse myself with old leaves. I bristled almost immediately.

"I'll rake where I please," I answered, lifting my chin a little.

It's a backlash effect, a reaction to the way things used to be. There was no reason for me to be upset. My daughter and I had come to the country to have a nice day in the sun with Dad, and we were all in a good mood. My ex hadn't meant for it to sound like an order; he was just telling me which area needed raking the most.

But I can't stand being told what to do. The last eight years of our relationship were full of control and possession, and I'm afraid I wasn't the one running the show.

My ex was extremely controlling. He told me who I could see and when. He would time my outings down to the last minute and explode if I was home late — even when it was just a grocery run or I'd been held up by a slow tractor on the road.

I don't blame him. He operated out of fear of losing control. He knew things were rocky. He loved me, I loved him, but we were so mentally separated from each other that he felt he had no other way to hang onto me.

So he'd rule with an iron fist (thank god not literally) and I would comply to his every wish in the hopes of accomplishing peace and affection. I dropped all my friends. I did what he wanted. I went where he told me. After a while, it became too much trouble to even go out.

For a long time, I lived in fear. He scared me. I felt worn down and beaten. I was tired. I was afraid to leave and needed to leave like the desert needs rain. I thought if I told him I wanted out that he would hurt me.

But I did it and he didn't do it.

Now, we live apart and love together. We're a couple under two roofs. We have our bad times still, but we have good times more often — enough to make it worth it.

If you would have taken a glimpse into my relationship with my husband a year ago and then had a look at it recently, you would probably notice something right away. A year ago my husband was a different guy. He didn't seem to care less if I was fighting a high fever, or if I had a deadline, or if the kids gave me a really trying day.

It didn't matter. He still wasn't going to lift a finger to help because keeping the house going was my job. Keeping the kids happy was my job. It just didn't seem to matter if I was wandering around in an exhausted stupor, because he was happy and had his video games to occupy him.

Cut to present day. Something about me trying to leave shook him up enough to where he does the things I always thought he should do be doing anyhow: he takes the kids when I have a lot of stuff to do, he'll make dinner once in a while if I'm running late getting home, and he'll encourage me to take a short nap if I'm not feeling well.

Those may sound like normal things a husband would do, but for me it's a 180 degree change from how things once were.

So what's the problem? Now that he's doing all the things I once wished he would do, why can't I just be happy? This is a question I have been struggling with for a while now. I think it all boils down to this: Why did it have to take me trying to leave for him to finally notice that something had to change?

For a couple of years I was obviously stressed out, exhausted and generally unhappy with the way things were. I told him things needed to change. I asked him to go to counseling with me. I begged him to cut back on his video game time. Really, if my bursting into tears at the drop of a hat wasn't a pretty good sign that things weren't working, what was?

Wanda's post last week about living in the real world rocked! Ice cream for dinner? You are my new hero!

So thanks, Wanda. I'm taking it to heart and making peace with my piles.

I'm tired of holding myself up to ridiculously unattainable standards. I read and re-read about the detrimental ways super-mom syndrome is killing women, all the reasons it's okay — healthy, even — to let the house be a mess, but I just can't tell that obnoxious internal judge to sit down and shut the hell up.

Grilled cheese, soup, salad, and fruit for dinner instead of elaborate homemade gourmet makes me feel like someone should call child services and take my kids to a better home.

Why? It's a healthy meal.

I'm so embarrassed about the tiny size of my one-bedroom apartment and the piles of papers and toys and clothes, I haven't invited one of Roxie's friends here to play this year.

I grew up in an impossibly spotless five-bedroom house. I'm talking David Lynch freaky clean. We sat down as a family for a home cooked meal. Every night. Always. Eight of us, when all the kids were home.

My parents, brother, two sisters, me, my uncle and grandma Rose, for whom Roxie is named. (My grandmother and my developmentally delayed uncle lived with us.)

Both my parents, and my Grandma Rose and my uncle worked full or part time. Still the food was homemade and nothing was out of place. Ever.

How'd they do it?

I'll tell you how. Two words. Cleaning lady.

There were four adults pitching in on meals, house work, and yard work. FOUR! When the adults were all working, there was enough income to hire outside help.

Even in my smaller space, with less people, how can I expect to do the work it took four (five, including the cleaning lady) adults handle in my parents' house?