Bi And Large

Just in case you were all worried about me, things are much better than they were. Pete came home early, took the girls, got me meds, and let me just curl up in bed. He rocks and I am very lucky!

Last night while I was resting I had a very vivid dream about Sam. I could see her and talk to her like nothing happened, although I knew she was still gone. I got so excited and when I woke up it was just crushing. I got online at about 11:30 or midnight and talked to Glen and had a hell of a cry. Sobbing so hard you get sick and your face is one big wet snotty puffy mess cry. Sobs like you can't catch your breath cry. And actually, after that and talking things through with Glen, I felt better. I'm amazed at his strength. He is going through so much more than I am and yet he can prop me up when needed. He's a good guy. 

Today I had the babysitter here so I headed downtown and took a lovely walk with Pete through the farmer's market. It was a perfect day. Mid 70's, blue sky, a little breeze. Fresh fruit and veg and holding hands downtown. Very nice. We haven't had the chance to talk in a while so I was doubly glad I made the effort, but it really was lovely.

This afternoon I got to work in my garden and sit out in the shade with the dog and the kids. I cut up an entire watermelon and brought it out for the kids in the yard and they ate the whole thing in literally about 3 minutes. Just inhaled it! I had bought red and yellow pear cherry tomatoes at the farmer's market too so I washed those up in a big colander and brought them out and we all ran around in the sun and played and swang and ate tomatoes and threw sticks for the dog all afternoon.

Tonight we headed out to Olive Garden for dinner on a whim. They were just packed, I assume because of the holiday weekend. Anyway during dinner Amy had to go potty and Pete took her into the men's room into a stall. She was apparently thinking about the difference between boy's bathrooms and girl's bathrooms because she suddenly yelled out at top volume "I JUST WANTED TO SEE YOUR P&NIS!!!" in the full bathroom. Yayyyyy. Poor Pete. I assume I"m on public bathroom duty from now on.

Anyway things are fine. Tomorrow is one-on-one day with Amy in the morning before she starts school and then three days of weekend and rest. I'm really looking forward to it.

Since Pete's job changed, of course, our insurance changed. And I haven't yet had the time to get into the pharmacy with the new prescription card and get everything moved over. Which is a problem, because I have run out of meds, and I haven't taken my mental health meds in 2 days. It seems like such a little thing on the surface but man those tiny pills make all the difference for me.

I'm so overwhelmed. Little thing, life, daily events, all seem insurmountable. I feel crushed, tumbled around, confused, battered. I feel like screaming for help and like hiding and crying. I panic. It's just too much.

I get so snappy with the kids. Because I'm so overwhelmed I think, and little annoyances take on these monstruous proportions. So they act like normal kids and I feel like I spend all day yelling at them. I realize it sooner or later and then I feel guilty.

I hate how I look. Everywhere I turn I seem to face reminders. I guess when I am more stable I don't see them as often? But as things are now every time I turn around I am struck by how abnormal I feel and how unloveable. It feels hopeless.

I am desperate for human contact and I compulsively scan through message boards and check email hoping to connect with a friend. I miss Sam and cry. I would call but a phone call feels way too threatening at the moment and visiting someone in person is entirely out of the question. There is just no way. So I sit and look for what I can handle, which is quick messages and notes I can read on my own terms. Then I feel guilty about that - and about the fact that I am so slack about responding.

I understand that I have been incredibly self centered since losing Sam. It set me off, and things have been really hard since. I don't feel like I have enough resources to manage all of the negative emotions and I am just unable to keep up with other people. I'm a bad friend I know. Take, take, take and no give. I don't know when it will get better. It's frustrating.

I don't eat. Food has no appeal and eating only makes me feel sick and sad. Eating doesn't happen any more.

I'm exhausted. Fully bone weary exhausted. I want to sleep and sleep and sleep. Every day it is a struggle to drag myself out of bed to parent my kids and just trying to make it through the day awake sometimes happens and sometimes doesn't. I try really hard but sometimes I just collapse. I wish I was a better mother to my kids instead of someone skating by on sleeping so much.

Then there is the housework - God the house is such a mess. But it has fallen down my priority list and that list gets increasingly shorter. I just... can't. I would if I could. Right now I'm doing the best that I can do just to keep breathing.

All of this and people like my mother mean well, I know they do, when they say things like, "Well don't just sit around feeling bad, do something about it! Go see your doctor for heaven's sakes, it's not that hard!" My doctor might as well be in the Himalayas for as accessible as that is to me right now. And yes, I know I have to get to the pharmacy; but I am having a lot of trouble getting that accomplished. Sad to say that is a major event for me right now. I'm giving it a big effort this afternoon. We'll see if I can make my body cooperate enough to do it.

If I have not managed to mention it yet, we are spending the weekend with some old and very good friends from high school. Heather is here with her son Eric, and Megan drove up with her child-to-be-born Beowulf. We're thinking they might change Beowulf's name once he or she is born, but who knows. I haven't seen Heather since Amy was a year old, I have never met Eric, and I haven't seen Megan in almost a year. It's good to be together!

We've spent a lot of time just relaxing around the house - made more difficult by my giant loving puppy. She makes a hell of a mess. We've gone to the park and played in the yard and generally had a great time. Eric is adorable. He has red hair like Heather and he has a ton of energy and it's really fun. It's fun to see Heather as a mom too!

Today we spent the day down at the state fair. The fair is BIG here. We ate lots of horrible-for-you (but delicious) food, we saw all kinds of animals, we went on rides. It was a blast! My feet are killing me. The kids got to pet horses and cows and pigs and sheep. They had cool bumper boats in the rides, too, which I had never seen before. Like bumper cars but boats, and they even let Iris drive one. I got some great video of Amy talking to a pig. She has a real affinity with animals and they always respond well to her. Well we were in the swine barn checking out the hogs and Amy gets down in front of one gate and says to a pig, "Oink oink oink!" and the pig listened and nodded its head and said, "Oink oink oink!" "Oink oink?" "Oink!" They had this whole conversation for a long time and it was hysterical. I took photos of my favorite fair food sign so far: "Ole and Lena's Hotdish On a Stick." There's a slice of Minnesota for ya. We ate pizza and 2-foot long mega-corndogs and snowcones. Amy was tempted by the deep fried twinkies!

It was really fun.

It's been really good to have Megan around again and I am reminded that I am so thankful that we live close enough to see each other regularly. She is such a great friend to me and a great 'auntie' to my kids! It's always very comfortable to hang out with her. With Heather I am amazed that we can go so many years without seeing each other or even really talking very much, and go through so many life changes (like parenthood!) in that time, and then when we get together it's like nothing at all has changed between us. That's nice. I'm lucky.

Tomorrow we'll do coffee and breakfast and then Megan has to head home unfortunately... But I think H and I will take the kids swimming so it will be another big day of fun. We do need to work off all that fair food after all!

I'm always paranoid these days that I am dying of a pulmonary embolism, like Sam did.

I have no family history, am not on hormones, am not sedentary, and am in perfect health. I have no logical reason to worry.

But I still do. My chest feels heavy, or it's hard to breathe. I lay awake at night thinking, "I didn't get enough excercise today, what if I have a blood clot?" I imagine in vivid detail how my husband will find me dead on the floor. I have made arrangements just in case and tonight I told the girls how much I love them. Because I wasn't feeling good. And I laid down on the couch wondering if I could just feel myself slipping away from life, just like that.

I lay awake at night feeling the tightness in my chest wondering about it. It's been there since Sam died. Maybe I will die young too.

Maybe I will and no one will be surprised, and everyone will say, "Well, she WAS morbidly obese you know." with a sad and knowing look, as if that explains everything.

My legs hurt a lot of the time. Maybe I do have clots.

I have bad chronic shin splints from an abusive event in my youth. Sam did too. Both our legs always hurt and we used to moan about it. Maybe I'll get a clot in my leg like she did and not notice because my legs always hurt like hers did.

This kind of thing keeps me awake at night. It's hard to breathe. I don't have any idea how much longer I have to live. None of us do really, I know. But what if I die soon. Tomorrow? Tonight? Will Pete miss me? Will the girls remember me? Will Glen go off the deep end completely if I die too?

I think I need to go take an aspirin.

It has been one month since Sam left us all here without her. Even from a continent away the world seems so quiet with her gone.

I can't believe it has been a month already. It feels like the world is rushing by around me while I'm still sitting her trying to come to grips with this. I can't jump back into my regular life, I can't keep up. I feel like emotionally I'm just treading water. I feel like a human life preserver sometimes holding Glen up by sheer force of will some days. I wouldn't have it any other way. So much of Sam is tied up in him that when I talk to him, I don't hurt missing her so much. Being around him eases my ache for her a bit.

I owe so many people emails. I have received a bunch and comments too, and I appreciate them SO very much. I just havent been able to muster the reserves up yet to write coherently back. Forgive me - I will!!

My parents leave tomorrow night and Heather and Eric arrive on Thursday. Summer is so busy - it's a good thing! It keeps me from thinking too much.

Big long vent warning. I wrote this today for my own benefit, not for the benefit of a reader, so it's long and not always coherent. Deal. I've been trying to write this out all night with varying success. I wanted to write it down earlier in the day, when I had it all straight in my head, but I didn't have time then. Of course. And now I am sleepy and not as angry and it is harder to explain.

Pete and I have this really weird setup with money in our marriage. It started out this way when we moved in together when we were 20, and we never changed it for some reason. It's not like any other married couple or family I know. Basically he earns all the money, it all goes into his checking account, and he pays all the bills. I don't touch it, I don't see it, I don't have access to it. It's all his money. Never our money - I don't have access to any of it. His alone. All of the investments and stuff are also only in his name. I have my own small checking account in my name. Every paycheck I get an 'allowance' to run the house with. It's not a lot, and lately Pete has felt the need to micromanage and comment on how I spend even that money. If I need anything else, I have to ask him. If the dog needs shots, I have to ask him. If I want to buy birthday presents for Amy, I have to ask him. If I need to replace a couple of my ratty t-shirts, I have to ask him. It's a pretty dysfunctional setup frankly; but there you have it.

When Pete gets stressed, he tends to spend compulsively. This system allows him to do so and it irks me. Lately he has managed to buy new cell phones, new laptops, toys for the computer, even a robot to mow the lawn for crying out loud. Talk about senseless and wasteful - and he has never even used it. The lawn just goes unmowed and full of weeds, the neighborhood eyesore, same as it always is.

When Pete gets stressed lately, his newest coping behaviour is to accuse me of wasting money or overspending - basically of spending HIS money without HIS approval. When he brings this argument out, it has no correlation to whether money has been spent or not; it always correlates to his stress levels instead. It's a way of manipulating me and controlling me to make himself feel better. Maybe he realizes he is doing it, maybe he doesn't. We've tried talking about it a couple of times now but boy does he get defensive. Which then leads to the ultimate Pete move in an argument: Walking away muttering insults under his breath. I can't hold any kind of conversation with that.

So a few weeks ago Pete changed jobs. Which was good I thought, except that it seemed to leave him much more stressed than ever before. In the process of the change we went for a space without a paycheck. As you do. During that time we ran out of food. I talked to him about it, and we agreed to take out $200 that I had been graciously given by some very good friends towards a trip to Australia. I would use $150 for groceries and the rest for two doctor appointment copays I had that week. Originally it was just groceries, but it worked out well with the 2 dr. appointments a couple of days later. So that is exactly what I did. Now this was MY money, if we're going to play the 'whose money is it' game. My friends gifted it to me. Pete said from the beginning that he would pay me back in the next paycheck. Because I wanted to make sure he didn't forget and leave me hanging, I reminded him a few times. Every time the answer was the same: "Yep, I'm remembering it, I can pay that back to you." I even left the grocery docket/receipt out so he could check it (which I should NOT need to do.) So far so good.

Sunday we're out and he nonchalantly asks me how much of the money has been spent. I say no more than we originally agreed on - the same $200 I have been telling him about since I took it out. And he flips. He says I never told him I was going to spend money on groceries (which was the entire point of using that money between paychecks) and I was spending money behind his back and keeping it from him etc etc. Ok now what the FUCK? This was one time I worked especially hard to cover my ass and make sure I had clear boundaries in place because I knew he was prone to pulling shit like this. And he STILL did it, by insisting something that wasn't true. In fact it was totally the opposite of how I had handled the whole thing. I was so angry and so hurt that he thought that was acceptable behavior in an already totally unbalanced setup where he has all the power. I don't care how stressed he is, I am not his emotional punching bag. Making me feel bad, especially by flat out lying to try to make me feel bad, is not a healthy way to make himself feel better. And even beyond that, what the hell does he even care if I spent that money? It was my money! I could have gone out and blown it all on designer teapots or something and he couldn't say shit about it. It is not any of his damn business.

The thing is, I didn't spend it on designer teapots. And I never do!! I am so good about not spending money on myself. I don't buy expensive bags, clothes, shoes, or housewares. I buy the kids clothes used and cheap and I only own 2 pairs of off brand, practical shoes. I don't buy jewelry, I don't get expensive haircuts, I don't go to the spa. I haven't had a manicure or pedicure in years. I don't even buy coffee out. What did I spend my money on that got his nuts all twisted? I fed the kids. $150 for 2 weeks to feed 4 people and 3 pets is not even much money - at least when I compare notes with other moms in our metro area, that's way below what other people are spending on groceries. And hell over $50 of that goes straight to milk alone! But I digress. My point is this: The money was spent on a VERY tight budget. Not a cent was overspent or spent frivolously. Every purchase was carefully planned and juggled so that we could eat. I took that money out of savings that I had received as a gift and I talked to Pete about it before, during, and after the event to make sure he was OK with it. I didn't need to do *any* of that. But I did it. And you know what it got me? It got me bitched at and basically accused of hiding my spending from him and of wasting his money. Once again proving my point that this isn't about money for him. It's never about money, it's about controlling me. And it has recently edged a little bit out of the realm of annoying quirks and a little bit closer to abusive and I am not willing to tolerate being treated like this any longer.

I try to talk to him about this, and he is so defensive he won't sit through the conversation. He either blows up or walks away. I set boundaries trying to protect myself and he flaunts them. I point out that he is crossing my boundaries and making me uncomfortable and engaging in behavior I can't accept and he tries to throw it back on me. Sometimes he insinuates that I am making the whole thing up or that I must be thinking this way because of my depression. That's not the case, he knows it, and it's not fair. He is leaving me no choice but to act when he crosses my boundaries and I hate that. Right now, I hate him, for once again making his family bear the consequences of his inability to cope with stress. When anything goes wrong in Pete's life it always has to be me and the kids who suffer for it. We go to therapy and solve one problem and he just creates another. Different delivery method, same core issues. Wash rinse repeat.

A week or so ago he yelled at me for buying art supplies for the kids. Back to school sales are on so I stocked up on stuff and I won't have to buy more all year. Crayons were 12 cents a box. I bought 5 boxes for 60 cents. I bought some markers for $1, and glue sticks for 50 cents, and a pack of construction paper for $1. I spent about 5 bucks. and he yelled at me for spending money - MY money, the allowance he so graciously bestows on me to run the household - so that our kids can fucking color. He yelled saying I bought ringtones for my cell phone. I wanted to say, "The expensive cell phone you just came home with one day and the expensive cell service you pay for every month?" He had counted up and tallied exactly what I had spent on a couple of $4 ringtones. But that bastard buys a $6 or $8 lunch downtown every day, doesn't he. Even though I spend part of my little budget making sure there is stuff in the house for him to take for lunch. He buys lunch every day, and most mornings he buys expensive coffee. He has some hawaiian place he likes. Well goody for him that he can indulge in coffee and buy lunch but God forbid I put a ringtone on my phone a month ago. He spends a fortune on parking but if I asked him about it, he would say of course he does. He needs to do that for his job. But buying a hose so I can water the yard and keep the garden up? Totally unacceptable frivolous spending of his hard earned money, and of course something for the garden couldn't possibly be for my job. What a crazy notion.

And that's just the thing. This is my job, running the house and taking care of the kids. I need resources to do that - I buy art supplies and spongebob bandaids and dishsoap and cat food because they are the supplies I use to do my job. Just like any other job, if I don't have access to supplies, my work doesn't get done. Getting those supplies is not some kind of luxury for me, it is the work I do. Work that, by rights, I should be compensated for. I contribute to this household just as much as Pete does. He does his job and I do mine. If he had to pay someone to care for and educate the girls to the standards I keep, to clean the house and to run errands and cook and garden and wash his underwear and match his socks and do the grocery shopping and change the sheets and keep the calendar up to date, if he had to pay someone to do that he would be out a lot of fucking money. I do it for our family and I contribute anything I would earn to our income. We BOTH work hard for the money that comes in and I have just as much right to it as he does. It is ours. We work together as a family and earn it as a family. My work is just as beneficial to the family as his is and I work just as hard as he does. Playing games with keeping money away from me or trying to control every cent I spend is so far beyond dysfunctional.

I want so badly to tell Pete that he has managed to turn into his grandfather, but I don't think he'd even get the reference.

I wrote a bunch more when I was really angry but today I decided maybe that part was better left unsaid. Look, overall Pete is a good husband. I like him. He helps out with the girls a lot, he doesn't hit us, and often he does really nice things too. It's not all bad. But no relationship is all bad. Even in the worst ones there's something that keeps you staying right? Not that I'm saying this is the worst possible either of course. It's just that "it isn't SO bad" is not quite the marriage desciption I envisioned for myself. I deserve to be treated more fairly than I am right now.

Photos of the girls are refreshed.

My new crap washing machine is broken again. After 3 weeks. SO glad I let Pete have his way and let him get the $1300 crap machine instead of the $400 machine I wanted. Really, I am.

Do you ever wonder if your whole life has been one big mistake? If nothing has really worked out quite like you imagined it should have and you feel like a failure at the rest of it. It all seems pointless to keep struggling with. I'm just digging myself in deeper anyway.

I miss Sam so much. A dozen times a day I think of calling or emailing her and remember at the last minute that I can't. It makes me so lonely. And I hate that so many people in my life *cough*my family*cough* seem to think that I should be over this by now and don't get why I am still sad. This isn't something I will ever just get over. This empty hurting spot will always be with me. I'm sad about it. And for God's sakes it's only been a couple weeks, a matter of days really. I didn't even get to go to her funeral. Why should I be happy? Why should I go about pretending like it doesn't affect me just to spare other people's feelings?

I have new pictures of the girls to put up but my desktop is all buggered up, and Pete won't fix it, and I can't fix it. So they will have to wait until he deems me worthy of his time and effort I guess. No one hold your breath.

No, we weren't on a collapsed bridge. The city is correct, but it's on the opposite side of downtown from us and goes the opposite direction (we live on the West side of town, the freeway runs North South on the East side of town.) In the years we live here I don't think I've ever even driven on it. So, we are all OK, and that includes everyone we know here. But it is scary, and I'm so sorry for everyone involved.

Grief is still overwhelming and I spend more and more time talking to Glen because I feel like so few other people really understand. And because I think it helps him as much as it helps me and Sam would appreciate that. I read somewhere where someone described it like walking through water. Sometimes it's shallow and laps at your ankles, sometimes it's 30 foot waves that crush you. That's a pretty apt description. Mostly I'm fine but sometimes out of nowhere I am sobbing and can't breathe. It affects everything. I didn't realize until someone told me today that I was being very crass and callous about the bridge collapse. It was almost funny to me. I don't mean at all to laugh at other people's pain, it just didn't seem to feel scary or hurtful to me I guess. Like I'm just too wrapped up in my own pain for this to even ping my radar.

I did take the girls to the farmer's market today and we played downtown and had a nice walk in the sun. I cried only a little which is an improvement. We bought lots of fruit and veg and buffalo jerky and hopefully they had a good time.

Anyway. We're OK. Just in case you thought we had died in the river or something. Not today.