Back to Work

I went back to work today and I actually made it through an entire 8 hour day – I am shocked! It was insanely busy – I think that may have helped because the hours just flew by. We have some huge deadlines coming up on Wednesday and not near enough time to get them all done or at least done the way I would like. I have just resigned myself to doing the best I can and leaving it at that. I hate taking that attitude too – I want to do my best at all times but I have discovered. . . I do like breathing as well, so in order to get better, I will do everything I can. I didn’t go into work until around 8:30 and left a little before 5pm. I LOVE going into work later – 8:30 instead of 7:30, I can take my time, not rush around and forget things. I guess I will enjoy it while I can.

Brian and I got into a HUGE fight yesterday – I am still upset about it but trying to let it all go. First, I did not need his shit yesterday when I still wasn’t feeling well and worried enough about getting back to work. It is tough to explain exactly what we were fighting about but basically boils down to him saying, in not so many words, that our house is cluttered with junk, MY junk and that I don’t take enough time to keep things picked up and organized.

OK – I agree with him and half the things he said, I actually agree with. I didn’t care for #1 – his attitude and the things he said, they really hurt my feelings and #2 – his timing for bringing all this shit up. I know there are other things going on here and that is why things got blown way out of proportion and I wish we could just talk about those things and not make it into something else.

So – we got into it about the shit state of our house and he left for a bike ride, saying when he got back, he was going to start whipping this place into shape. MY ASS. Even though I felt like utter dog shit, I proceeded to spend the next 2 and a half hours tearing our house apart. And putting it back together again. By the time I was done, I had about 5 trash bags filled with stuff for the curb and a lovely pile in our living room of items that Brian would jolly well look through and decide to keep, throw away, take to Goodwill or try and sell on Ebay.

I was pissed off, I was hurt, I felt humiliated and I was ashamed. I knew things were out of control – maybe not for most people but definitely for us. Things just accumulate, you know? And I hate to be wasteful so if it is something I think I could use, I try and save it but I do know through years of experience that if it hasn’t been touched in a year, it needs to go.

We accumulate most of our shit from other people for Christmas’s and birthdays – people just buy us random things that we don’t need and would never use. What do you do with these things?? I feel horrible just throwing them in the trash – bottles of lotion, kitten notepads and post its, costume jewelry, magents, candle holders, the list goes on and on. SO – I threw it all away. Every last bit of it – even if the bottle of lotion had never been opened.

They are sweet gestures, every single one of them but they are all such an utter waste of money. I have worked over the years with my mother and MIL to work from a specific list for gifts for us – if you are going to insist in buying us something and wrapping it because you like giving people things, wouldn’t you rather give people something you know they want and/or need? So many people take offense to being given a list, even though they want to buy us things – I will never understand that. I would much rather get a list from someone so I know they will get something useful and something that isn’t going to be thrown in the back of a closet or . . .in the trash.

So, in order to keep Brian and I out of WW III, I need to sit down and have some heart to heart with our friends who are the biggest gift offenders. Either they stick to our lists or we just skip gifts altogether. It really isn’t necessary – I understand Brian’s point – we are old enough now and make enough money now that if we really want something, we can just go out and get it ourselves. On the other hand, I adore giving and receiving gifts and would hate to see is discontinue the practice altogether.

We aren’t that tough of people to figure out – I think our problem is that we love gift cards above anything else, especially for restaurants because we like to go out but people hate giving gift cards because they can’t wrap them and they don’t feel personal enough. Trust me – your beaded, giant, wrap around bracelet may feel personal to you, but it falls off my wrist and is a color I would never wear! I am a bitch, aren’t I?

Anyhoo – back to our fight – so Brian gets home, sees what I did and completely flips out. He didn’t mean for me to do it right this second, I am sick, I need to rest to get back to work, blah, blah, blah – how the hell was I supposed to do that with a clear conscience after everything he said? He certainly knows me better that than. And then he was pissed off even more when he saw all the bags of shit and spent the better part of 2-3 hours going through all of them to make sure there was nothing that needed to be pulled out or recycled. Hey – at that point, I just wanted to gone so who gave a shit about that?

We talked later that night – I asked him if anything else was going on he wanted to talk about – was he resentful because he felt I was slacking too much around the house, did he want me to do more, did he want me to make more room for him in the house – like the comment about how he only gets a little corner and my shit is everywhere else? He swears no – up and down – to everything, he is not mad about something else, not resentful, does not want me to do or not do something that pisses him off, nothing.

I think his little temper tantrum has to do with me being sick for so long – he is bored out of his mind from not going out the past 3 weekends in a row. I have told him a million times that he needs to get some friends, call up people he knows, get involved in something so he has something of his own besides just working out. I don’t want him to resent me if I am busy or sick and can’t keep him entertained. I can’t take that kind of pressure with everything else I have to do. I want us to enjoy each other, have fun together, not feel obligated to each other because we have noone else! What kind of life is that?

One that he seems pretty content with – everytime I suggest him getting together with a friend, he always has an excuse. My friend’s husband, Chris is too slow – it takes twice as long to do anything with him because he moves slow, thinks slow, just likes to do things more slowly than Brian does, I guess. His friend, Steve, usually has other plans unless he calls him way ahead of time because he works a lot of hours . . .and Lord knows that most guys don’t like to make plans more than a day or two in advance. His friend, Jon – he never calls him and I am not exactly sure why. He is married, has 2 kids, works a full time job and is a volunteer policeman so I think he just assumes he is busy and doesn’t bother to call. His friend, Opie – again, no idea why he never calls him but he has a tendency to be busy a lot too with other friends or his family.

*sigh* I don’t know what the answer is for him – all I know is that I don’t want him to take it out on me every time he is bored. I know this will pass once I get better but it makes me scared – what if I really got sick someday? Cancer or something? How would he handle it? I know it is tough for him to understand when I don’t feel good – he never gets sick, is never hurt, is rarely every tired. Peak physical health so I am sure my health woes wear on him.

We are working our way back – he called me at work today to see how I was doing and we had a nice evening together, eating dinner and watching Anthony Bordain in Berlin. We will see where this week takes us and hopefully we can do some fun things, FINALLY this weekend.

I better cut this off – holy shit, this is a long entry. I guess I just had a lot of say tonight!