Decompression
So…I need to write in here. And I’m frustrated and angry because things have been so awesome lately, but today was so absolutely horrible that I need to come in here and decompress – need to write it all out, work through it, and move on. And I feel like that’s such a shame when everything really has been so good lately, but it is what it is, I guess.
The day started off…good, actually. After an interesting (and hilarious) banter with a friend last night, Wes and I were both somewhat motivated to renew our profiles on polymatchmaker.com. I was reading over Wes’ and it just…it melted my heart. Like, I read over it and realized that if we weren’t together, he’s totally someone I would message. <3 It’s funny…I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him describe himself (because he doesn’t have a need to do such a thing in normal life) as a father of 3 little boys…something about that just really struck me. And seeing him proclaim all these things – things that I often think are *my* things and he’s just a great husband and goes along with them (like the chickens, for example) and realizing that those are internalized and he isn’t just going with things is…awesome. So anyway, I was reading it over a few times today and wanted to send him this text message letting him know how full of love I was feeling at the moment. And then I realized his phone was sitting in front of the tv…he left it when he went to work. And that just started the rash of bad things.
A few minutes later, I got an email saying that we had a balance of almost $1400 due immediately to our old apartment complex. Um…WHAT?! And of course, I couldn’t get in touch with Wes to talk about it, because…no phone. I called and left a message for the office people, but I never really realized how isolating and lonely it felt to not be able to reach out to him when I need to. Even when he’s not able to respond right away, or even for hours, just sending him the message and knowing he read it/will read it soon helps me deal with things so much better. So I’m freaking over that, and then I get online and find out that Laura’s having horrible problems with Nathan. 🙁 He’s 3 months old, and he’s gained 2lbs since he was born. That’s it. And despite taking almost 4oz of formula every 3 hours AND nursing, he gained absolutely nothing in the last 2 weeks. She’s devastated, and it was really triggering for me to remember all of those feelings from my issues with Xander. And I want to help her, but I can’t. Knowing how it feels to live in that black hole that wants to swallow her, and yet being able to do absolutely nothing about it…it sucks. Big time.
OH and it was absolutely FREEZING in the house this morning and I couldn’t get a fire going to save my life. 🙁 Miserable. We still don’t have propane because Wes hasn’t worked in 2 weeks and so throwing out $450 isn’t on our list of things to do at the moment. We’ve been running a small fire in the woodstove for the past 2 nights even though the chimney isn’t getting cleaned until the 9th because it’s hit freezing at night and there’s no doing that with no heat at all. We went out and spent a ton of money on electric blankets after freezing through the first 30 degree night. So anyway, I finished up everyone’s costumes and left the house ASAP, because at least there was heat in the car!
Went over to Laura’s and Wes finally called me on a friend’s phone. I told him about the money. He said he was getting off at 5:30, but that he was tired and he was just going to go home. Where he would just sit and play Starcraft 2 and miss his final baby’s first Halloween. He’s made it to 1 1/2 Halloweens in the 6 years we’ve had kids. He said "It’s not like they’re never going ToTing ever again". OMG. Sooo pissed. So I get off the phone with him and the lady from the apartments calls. She doesn’t tell me much – she says she’ll mail me the invoice (they had the wrong address) and email me the pictures they took. Ok, whatever.
Pictures…wow. Like…20 of them? At least 10 were pics of the dirty carpet. Ok…except it was dirty when we moved in and probably should’ve been replaced BEFORE we moved in, but we didn’t press the issue because we know we’re hard on carpets, and we figured it was better to make a dirty one even dirtier than ruin a new one. Several pics of crayon on the wall…um, you paint all the walls between tenants anyway. So no real expense incurred there. Pics of the closet doors that were off their tracks…takes 5 minutes to fix – I just didn’t know how to do it. Again, no expense there. A picture of a jar left in the perfectly clean fridge…because I’m sure it cost you $500 to throw away that jar. Stupid crap like that. So I emailed her back and told her all of this. We’ll see if I get a response back tomorrow. I’m so pissed. We had a $200 deposit and honestly there’s no way there’s even $200 in damages, let alone $1400 (or, I guess that would be $1600 if they’re charging us $1400 AND not giving back the deposit).
Anyway. Wes got off work and called and said he’d compromise – that he’d come by for awhile and then go home. Whatever. So he shows up, we get all the kids together (which is a feat in itself) and we head out. About a block down the road, it starts raining. It’s just light, so we keep going. And then it rains harder. By the time we got back to the house, I had water dripping down into my eyes. And we only hit I dunno…3 or 4 houses? So we stripped all the kids out of their wet clothes and sit down to eat dinner. Denise and Pete showed up and the rain let up for the most part, so we decided to go try again, but Wes left after dinner and before going back out. I was pissed. But whatever. So it’s cold, it’s sometimes rainy, I have the baby strapped on me and tucked into my jacket, Jaime’s dragging a giant bag that’s almost as big as him against the street but refuses to let anybody else touch it…it was just a clusterfuck. To top it all off, I developed a UTI about halfway through the night, and Jaime started freaking out over his bag and my hand and being cold about halfway back to Laura’s. I threw the kids in the truck as soon as we got back and left.
Got home and went to shut the door to the chicken’s outside run and discovered our first 2 eggs! They’re TINY (they were from some bantam hens we got the other day…I’ll talk about that later) and I brought them inside, then went to get stuff out of the car. While I was gone, Xander broke one of them. It’s 11, everyone’s finally in bed, and although I really should be cleaning, Wes didn’t split any wood tonight so there’s no fire, I’m cold, and when I’m done decompressing I’ll probably head to bed.
I’d update on some of the good stuff, but honestly this post is already long enough and the good stuff just doesn’t seem to belong down here until all the bitching. Maybe tomorrow will be better and I can get a decent update in then.
