Wednesday, May 27

Today I am grateful for:

Nice weather and sunshine today.

That I was able to pull today out of the shitter, attitude-wise. I basically woke up in a horrible mood, because I knew I was going to have to go to town again (we forgot to do this on Monday) and sign/pay for our tax return. I now get up very late because my husband works night shift, and I stay awake until he's home, and I can't always fall asleep right away. I now struggle to get anything done during "business hours", so waking up today, late as usual, knowing I had to get to town before closing time and still somehow get to ride was just immediate stress.

I did get to the tax people, and got our returns settled and paid them for doing the returns, but in order to pay the gubmint what we owe for taxes, I had to go to the bank, and that was closed.

Getting some good plastic pails with lids. I use these for various animal feeds mainly.

Managing to ride River. I was late for my riding time slot, but there was no one after me so the barn owner said it was okay to ride.

A good ride on River, and it helped me feel better about things, because at least today wouldn't be wasted if I could have a decent ride.

My Mom went back home today, and my sister is going to be with her for a while. I called, and Mom sounded okay, and happy to be in her house. I don't know how this is going to go; no one does. I'm glad she got to go home, for however long she can.

Finally planting the last of the garden. Always a relief.

Watching the newest incarnation of "Little Women", and it was really good. I have to say though, I don't know if I could have followed the story line without having read the book, because it did that thing of moving back and forth in time, and that was disorienting.

Lately it just seems like such an exercise in will to get through the day without giving in to pessimism and frustration and be angry and unhappy all day. I know we're fortunate, and that I have a lot to be grateful for. I am grateful. A thousand times a day.

I am still also often lost in how different everything is now. A year ago, many things in my life were different, and there's been such a tremendous amount of change. Not all of it is bad. A lot of it is good, but there's just so much work to be done.

My sweetie hasn't been doing anything tangible on the house. Yes, we've been cleaning up the yard a bit here and there. He moved a bit of clay to pack in around the house where it had settled over the winter. That's about it.

We're waiting on a friend to move most of the clay piled up; he needs it at his place; but we're waiting on him and can't do it ourselves, and it's taking too long. There's a whole bunch of other stuff that needs to go, and it can't unless the clay is gone. I can't understate how awful all of this crap makes me feel, piled up like this in our yard, and how it feels to know we can't do anything about it.

My sweetie is back-pedaling all the time about how long things are going to take. Things that he said were going to be done over the winter might not even be done by this winter. It wasn't supposed to take the entire winter to have the furnace hooked up in the basement.

The last set of days off he had; NOTHING was done that forwarded work on the house, even though there were things he could have done in the basement, or some electrical work.

I am having a hard time mentally dealing with the reality that we aren't doing anything to cover the clay around the house, because it needs to settle another year, apparently. So our house is ringed with bare dirt, and it's ugly, and every time it rains it's mud; mud so thick that it clings to your boots until you can't walk. I have little walkways of boards to get around.

He hasn't done anything about securing the money to do the work we need this summer. He said three months ago that he had some work to do to fulfill the bank's requests, and hasn't done anything besides "look into some software" (the bank wants drawings of the addition). If we don't get this extension on the mortgage, we really won't get very far this summer. Any money we'll earn will have to pay the furnace guys.

I'm pretty angry about all of this. I see no work happening. We haven't cleaned up any more of the yard for about two weeks. There's a giant pile of wire and metal in front of the garage that he swears is going to a scrap dealer. It could have gone this past weekend, but somehow it didn't.

He wants me to be nice to be around. He wants me to be happy all the time, or he gets upset because I "don't appreciate how hard he tries". Most days I just want to scream.

Instead, he does a thousand little things, but these are the things we would do in a year where we weren't trying to finish a house. He's helping me in the garden, and taking things to the dump, and going to town and buying a socket he needs, but he's not working on the house. Yes, they're good things to get done, but they don't put windows in the basement, and they don't put a set of stairs on the front door (he took them down because he was going to move the deck there, then that fell through, and to get in and out the front door you have to use a ladder again).

I'm supposed to be nice, and pleasant, and not nag, and if I get upset he just says that maybe I should do more to help. I'm not a carpenter. I'm not a heavy equipment operator. I'm not an electrician. Any time he works on the house, I'm generally helping him as a laborer. Help him lift something heavy? Sure. Tear something down? Sure. Load the trailer with stuff to go to the dump? Sure. I do my best. I can't do construction on my own, or move clay with a backhoe.

It bothers me almost constantly, and I can't control it.