Tuesday, June 22

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

A few more nips of interest in things on buy and sell. I posted some more things. I don't expect everything to sell, but it would sure be nice.

I wire-brushed the picnic table. This is the table that was damaged when we were doing construction on the house about two years ago, and it's been lying upside down on the concrete pad by the back door ever since. My sweetie finally fixed it a couple of days ago. Today I cleaned it all off and scraped the loose paint, and maybe I can paint it soon.

So, it looks like my husband will have to go back to work in a month. He had asked for the whole summer off, because he had banked holiday time and banked days from working overtime, and they said yes. Now they took that back.

So, that sucks. It means we likely won't get that much done on the house now. I'm looking at another winter of maybe not being able to use the basement really, or not having the addition finished. I'm really pissed off about this, but OF COURSE you can't say no to work, can you?

My husband's uncle who lives fairly close to us, is not doing very well at all. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer about two years ago, and he likely doesn't have much time left.

SO, my husband's parents are coming out to see him. The did ask if they could stay with us, and my husband said it made more sense for them to stay in a hotel because we really don't have anywhere to put them. They will still likely come out here for a day.

For those who remember, I really don't get along with my sweetie's parents. His Mom walks into our house like it's hers now, and starts cleaning and making a meal for everyone, and dictates when we eat and everything like she's the head of the household. She even does the thing of serving everyone (in my house) and then organizing all the dish washing and so on. She loves being the hostess, even when it isn't her house. His Dad just tells sexist stories and jokes, and has done some creepy things around me.

They aren't awful all the way through. They've helped us build stuff, and helped get some things moved from the kitchen in the trailer to the house. I don't know how to explain it. I just feel infantilized. I don't get treated like an adult woman in her own home. I get treated like a kid, in THEIR home (they treat our house like it's theirs). When we work on something all of a sudden I become part of the "womenfolk", which is NOT the dynamic my husband and I have. So not only am I treated like a kid, I get treated like a "woman", and I can't get them to see me as an "equal".

There's always lots of "suggestions" from his Mom about how I should do things, or judgement of my lifestyle. As an example, I have a shoebox size tote full of nail polish. She saw that and had to make a big point about how she only has five nail polishes and they are perfect for her needs because they are the right ones to own for the seasons or something, and if she buys a new one she throws one away.

She'll say things like "oh, you could do this and this and this, and really make this room pretty".

Or some crap like "We believe in when you bring one thing into the house, one thing has to leave" (no, they don't do this. She would just like you to believe that, or at least to tell you what YOU should do to overcome your horrible hoarding problem).

She just spouts these platitudes like those annoying people who have a proverb for everything.

Then she gets drunk at supper and starts ranting about everyone in her family (so you know she's going to get drunk and rant about me later at someone else's house), usually while my husband's dad is trying to say something gross and inappropriate. Literally every time they are here.

The other thing is that in general, I don't like "entertaining" that much. If it's people that are very low key and happy with our very casual lifestyle, then great. If I have to do a lot of cleaning, or have to do anything special, then I'm out. I also have a weird sleep schedule and I'm up all night, and I sleep late. Most people would find it awkward to be in my house alone all morning while I slept. I find it weird to be up all night while someone's trying to sleep.

Anyhow, they are coming to see Uncle K, but hopefully I won't have to see much of them. At least my husband was firm about them getting a hotel.

I went to see River. His breathing is not great in this warmer weather, and I don't know what else to do for him. We had him on an herbal supplement and that did nothing. It's not an infection because there's no mucous. This is likely just his reality now after having breathed in so much dust and mold at the other barn. He's been treated several times when the breathing gets a little labored, but I'm not even sure that it helped, because most of the time it comes and goes depending on the heat, or if there's a lot of dust in the air.

When he's not breathing well, he's a bit sluggish, and I don't work him very hard. It just makes me feel like a jerk for even trying to work him.

There's also some pressure to try to drive home to visit family, which I was planning to do at some point, but now seems much harder given that my husband won't have the time off that we thought he was going to have.

Anyhow, today has been one of those days where I feel like there's just too much to deal with.