Tuesday, June 30

Today I am grateful for:

If it was going to rain so much and be awful, at least I could just come home after the riding lesson today and rest, and not feel guilty for doing so. With that much rain, I wasn't going to be working in the yard.

A good riding lesson. You could tell that River still wanted to worry about the one end of the arena, where people and dogs sit, and there's piles of stuff, but I kept him focused and we worked. We worked on my posture, trying to keep my hands still, lots of walk to canter transitions that he did very well with, and me keeping my shoulders back and open (posture). He started out kind of tight in the back, from the colder day and the rain likely, so I lunged him first to warm him up before just sitting on that tight back. At the end of the ride I think he was happy to be warmed up.

Lots of people around today. No one seems that worried about social distancing any more. Alberta is opening up more, but I am not sure why, because we seem to keep having about 40 new infections every day, which has been about what we've had from the beginning, so it's not really like the virus is slowing down in any way.

I spent some time at the barn drawing pictures with the two boys of the barn owner. Somehow, there's something really relaxing about drawing simple pictures of bird houses and chickens with kids.

We have just gotten so much rain this year. Every couple of days, more rain. If it rains while my husband is home on days off, it means nothing gets done on the house. Not even anything in the basement, he just doesn't do anything. Maybe we'll take something to the dump, or he'll go help our friend, but nothing on our house. I'm literally at the point where I'm thinking I'm going to have to just accept that the house as it stands, is likely the house I'm going to be living in for at least another year. We are not likely going to have an addition that we can live in this winter. We likely won't have anything meaningful done on the basement that is supposed to become a living space. I likely won't be moving all of my books and stored items in the sea can into the house again this year, and the sea can will be sitting in our yard another winter. I won't have a nice bathroom, or a proper mud room this year, and apparently no landscaping done to the area around the house that is bare mud.

Every set of days off that my husband has been home, he's helping our friend continue to tear down his old house, not at home working on our house. He's spent the last two sets of days off helping our friend, in the hopes that this mountain of dirt can go to fill our friend's basement. However, when it rains, the dirt will be too heavy to move. Same with the pile of concrete. That also means the pile of scrap metal behind it can't be removed.

Last set of days off, my sweetie fell and hurt his back (doctor says just bruised) helping our friend tear down his house, and he's been in a lot of pain since then, even though he still has to go to work. He is still too sore, in my opinion, to do anything this set of days off. I don't want him to hurt himself worse. I don't think he should still be in so much pain after two weeks if that was just bruising, but he's not interested in going back to the doctor. So, I don't anticipate anything getting done this set of days off.

What really burns me, is that nothing is getting done even on getting drawings made of the addition, so that the bank will lend us the money to keep working. He keeps getting an idea, and then won't do anything about that idea for the ten days he's at work, even though he has a couple of hours every afternoon he could be pursuing that goal, and then he might make a phone call to someone while he's home, and that's it. No results.

I'm supposed to be patient and understanding through all of this. If I get angry, he gets defensive and shuts down. He just feels that he's doing his best, even though his best is really no meaningful results at all.

We've cleaned up some of the yard, and that's it. We were supposed to be building an addition, putting a porch over another part of the basement so it won't leak into the basement, installing windows in the basement and possibly replace old windows in the rest of the house, and so much more.

I thought he'd be taking some time off this summer to do it. He has two weeks of regular vacation, and a few more weeks of banked time (days that he gets instead of getting paid overtime), but he's afraid to take them in case he gets laid off due to Covid-related lack of new projects. If he had to sit at home and wait for a new project, he could use up his banked days and vacation first.

All I can do is live with it. My husband says I just "need to learn how to not be angry".